An ode to Hitchhiking

   So, we've just been travelling through Iceland. After checking camper & car rental prices (insane), studying the availability of public transports on the island (few), reading Icelandic laws about camping in the wild (allowed-ish), looking at many many maps, and speaking a bit to people - both locals and tourists, we decided to try to find our way Hitchhiking.

   The obvious advantage of this choice can't be understated : it's for free. That makes a difference, in such a place, actually. The fact that Iceland is, after all, one of the most expensive countries in the World, is quite well known.

   But, starting this adventure thinking mostly about cutting costs down, this experience ended up being something quite else, and that's what this small article is about.

   We both had a fair share of experiences with Hitchhiking : Libertad was Hitchhiking with her mom and her sister as a child. For myself, I have been Hitchhiking all my teenage years. I'm coming from a small village in South-West of France, without any public transport but with many friends living in other villages, so as you can imagine, teenage Etienne spent a lot of time on the side of the road.

   Since we started this trip (and before that), we have been Hitchhiking together too, mostly to save time, or when a bus wasn't about to come anytime soon for one reason or another, but this is the first time we experience it on a longer period, for a longer journey.

   And this has been, again, quite an experience.

   We were, at the beginning, a little bit afraid to only go from point A to point B traveling this way. That's what they sell you when they rent you a camper for (minimum) 150€ a day : "complete freedom", "go wherever you want", "you're the master of your adventure". 

   The thing is, driving in Iceland, you'll see incredible things  e v e r y w h e r e . Going from A to B means - over here - to go through unbelievable fjords one minute, and through a magnificent lava field with unseen colors the next one. "Wow, there's a waterfall there ! Eh look, here, a volcano !" 

   Paradoxically, as we got taken up by tourists half of the time, we ended up sightseeing a lot anyway. Stopping here and there with our hosts, tagging along on their plan for the day. And sharing this with them actually felt bigger than seeing it by ourselves. An adventure shared with these new friends. Isn't that bigger than being able to decide which waterfall to see first? Given that we'll probably all end up going to the same places anyway. Nothing is really secret anymore in Iceland.

   To travel these 1763 kilometers (!) through the country, we got taken up by many cars - in a few campers too -, with people with many different backgrounds : a few Polish construction workers, an Icelandic farmer, a Swiss traveler, a Scottish journalist & Whisky writer, a lot of former hitchhikers themselves, some retired Brits on holidays, an Icelandic college-dude going to a party, a lovely couple working with High-security prisoners in Québec, a German National Park ranger, this amazing Icelandic grandma, just to name a few.

   And this is why Hitchhiking is fantastic. You meet people.

   Not only you meet people, but you meet the best kind of people : those that go out of their way to help someone else. In a way, Hitchhiking acts a little bit like a filter. Not that all people that don't stop are terrible people (some are), but that the ones that decide to stop usually are great. Hope that makes sense. I don't want to make enemies.

   And not only you tend to meet good people, but they are also incredibly diverse. Think about it, it is relatively rare in our modern Western societies to meet diverse people. In terms of age group, in terms of social class of status, in terms of jobs, in terms of past experiences, in terms of interests.

   Obviously, this is not to be taken as an absolute statement, but it is still relatively true that we tend to see and speak to people that are very similar to us. They work in the same field, they are our friends back from school - or they know your friend back from school! -, they are part of our family, etc. With similar backgrounds come similar interests and similar ways of thinking. And that's okay.

   But it is worth to be noted when one can meet people from more diverse backgrounds. That's what we observe here with Hitchhiking. These conversations make us learn, discover things. It makes us think, consider other ways, realize other people even exist. It makes us grow. And that's a good thing.

   Of course, not everything is always going perfectly either with Hitchhiking. So much time waiting in the cold, nobody to be seen for miles. But when you don't really have a schedule, that strangely becomes part of the fun too. You joke about it, you're learning how to play in this random place, you're seeing beautiful things in your environment you wouldn't have seen otherwise. 

   After a while spent waiting on the road, even rejections are becoming a game. We spent a lot of time laughing, seeing some cars coming and knowing just from the looks of it that it would never stop. There's a few archetypes of non-stoppers, which honestly could be fun to describe and ridicule as a form of catharsis, but I refuse to go that low.

   Aaah, maybe a couple, why not! 

   So, there's the big car. You know the one, it's expensive. The business man driving alone and too fast worked too hard to be able to sit in these comfortable heated leather seats, and is never ever going to stop and let in these dirty leftists that would better be using their time working on their start-up project to be able to buy a big & expensive car themselves.

   There's the completely overcrowded car, with about 17 kids behind, this one is funny because you see it coming from far away but hey honestly it's fair enough. You're the one feeling sorry actually.

   There are people that don't even look at you (this one Libertad doesn't like), like you're not even deserving a look, expressing a certain contempt to the mere concept of Hitchhiking, that I personally attribute to a blending of fear and social conformity. It's difficult imagining being dependent on the good will of other people to some. That puts a lot of things in perspective, a relative faith in humanity, it requires to be okay with failure, it requires to be able to re-plan. It's difficult for some. So they don't look at you, they avoid risking to empathize.

   Another archetype that, if it doesn't infuriates me, saddens me a bit, is the young couples, typically in camper-vans, that looks a you with an expression between annoyance, remorse and pride. It's a tricky one. I think that they do empathize, but they got sold this camper-van, car or even the general idea of their trip as their own individual adventure. It's everywhere from the influencers' posts on Instagram, to the brochures & guide books, passing by advertisements for said camper-van in the airport.

   YOU. And your partner. Alone. With your camper. Freedom. And waterfalls. Bwaaaaah. But reality is not like this. Actually, there's about 50 other couples with campers at the camping, and about 50 others to every waterfall you'll visit. And that's fine, that's how it is, deep down they knew it. But that's not really what they got sold, though. So when comes the opportunity to give a lift to someone, they feel a bit bad, but they won't share the last bastion of their individual adventure.

   But they are the ones missing out, really.

   OK, to be fair, I cannot speak for other people - wouldn't want to anyway. But I truly think that these good feelings we had about Hitchhiking and about our hosts were also reciprocated.

   Many of our hosts seemed to be as glad as us to have met someone unexpected that day. Many of them seemed to enjoy our talks, the little extra joy of doing their good deeds of the day as a bonus. Some of them ended up spending more time than we thought, and left us not merely as strangers but as friends.

   I have no doubt we will meet again, somewhere, somehow.

   All the people we met and talked to during our journey through Iceland told us things amongst the lines of "oh, hitchhikers used to be everywhere some decades ago, but now nobody dares to do it anymore".

   This is a vicious circle & a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cars won't stop because "nobody hitchhikes anymore, so this person there must be a weirdo", and people would hitchhike less and less because cars are stopping less and less.

   Hitchhikers will then tend to disappear slowly, buy themselves their own individual cars, and hitchhike less because hey they have a car now. So there's less hitchhikers. This one must be a weirdo. Etc, etc, etc.

   I think this is a shame, that a symbol of fraternity between people, heritage of the counterculture movements of the 60's as well, would find itself declining like this. And we're not even talking about the ecological impacts of it, I mean we've seen tens of thousands of empty seats rolling in front of us in just about three weeks.

   I will from now on try to do my part to revive this fantastic way of traveling. 

   To conclude this lengthy text, I doubt anyone would be surprised that I would recommend whoever is reading that to, well, try it !

On either side of the car.

   Always use you head before (and during), obviously. This is not meant to be a guide about how to successfully Hitchhike either, but to advise you to use your brain seems to be general enough to be included here.

   This was an ode to Hitchhiking.

Hope you'll consider it, next time you're on the road.

Etienne, July 12024