Higher point of view from Iti
(not because I am superior but because I literally have a higher viewpoint)
The day started like any other. Me and Axelle woke up, fed the horses, ate some breakfast, and prepared our four-legged friends for the morning tour. Our additional Icelandic colleague (nameless, as I am not sprinkling unicorn glitter on them during this post) bashed in with customers who were always a little bit stiff as icebreaking was one of many things that this guide sucked at and they had been stuck in a bus with this character for 20 minutes. In general, it was always our job to entertain our clients despite this coworker also working as a guide.
I started having problems with the extra guide after a month of working for the company. As I later found out, our extra guide had a very tragic history with different unfortunate life events and multiple injuries from their fisherman career that caused chronic pains in their body (I one time almost killed them by cleaning this ugly-ass shelf that was located in the room where we accommodated our guests. The shelf looked like a dumping ground with an old coffee machine, empty bottles, some random screws and thingys that one day were supposed to be useful, a lot of other stuff that the additional guide had just left there, and of course, their painkillers that I moved from the shelf to a first-aid bag - logical. After coming back from a tour, the extra guide sat in the coffee room shivering from pain and asked me where I put their medicine - whoopsie). Life sometimes sucks of course, but I do not know if that gives someone the right to boss others around, fulfill their own tasks in the sloppiest way possible, be careless with the horses, work twice as little, and get paid double if not more. If so, I can also make my life more tragic to have an excuse to be a dick later. From one thing to another we developed this very spikey relationship despite my tries to soften things up with small talk and compassionate worry about health issues within their family members. Later I gave up because they didn't show any signs of change and I am not going to blow sunshine up an adult human's ass every day, so things got worse.
The day when this guide stayed back from the tour, instead of cleaning the boxes, they played around with the powerwasher so that after a long day of work we could have the luxury of cleaning the boxes with clean shitshovels.
Iceland was an amazing experience, I do not want to sound like I didn’t enjoy it, but there definitely were some hardships like there are anywhere you go. This guide, in addition to the company’s ways of treating horses signature style, was one of them. And all of this might be the reason why I might have looked intimidating to Martin. But back to the day. My favorite coworker bashed in with the customers, who I managed to cheer up like always, we carried out our tours and had some plans for the evening. Ölfus girls had convinced the boss to allow us on a fun ride to Reykjadalur - a hot river that you could bathe in. I was super excited because the weather was awesome. After the last tour we started releasing horses to the field when all of a sudden the extra guide flew onto us like an irritated hedgehog mumbling something in their non-existent English, which was one thing that I assumed made them tense because they couldn’t express themself the way they wanted. Axelle was the first that got in their way and after realizing that they wanted the horses to be put inside the stable and Axelle asked a very valid question of why, they clapped their hands in front of Axelle’s face and yelled:” Just put them in!” I was shocked. The weather was incredible and I didn’t understand why would the horses would have to be inside so early for so long. I headed towards the guide and strongly demanded an explanation because I hate doing things just for the reason that this is the order. They then gathered themself and what I understood was that we were going to be away for at least six hours and the horses are unattended. Instead of checking on the horses (as the manager lived 10 minutes away) or asking someone close-by to check on them from time to time or just knowing that if they have food on the field, they are not even trying to leave, the option that they chose was to cram horses into the stable (three into one box). I was mortified. Angrily we put them in and headed to Ölfus. I let some steam out during our drive and Axelle endured it like a champ. She was a very patient listener every time I was raging out my anger on the company's way of doing business and let’s say I heated up quite often.
The space that our horses in Reykjavik had was absolutely disgusting.
I knew that there was a new girl in Ölfus who I hoped would bring some relief to Elisa (like Axelle brought to me) knowing that things were not good in the countryside. When we got to Ölfus, there was a lot going on, horses had to be prepared and loaded into the trailer, I was still pissed and also confused because I had worked in Ölfus for only a couple of days and didn’t yet know where the f**k things were. And our boss was exceptionally good at creating a mess by pacing around like a toddler on drugs. In conclusion, I might have been a little tense and grumpy.
We managed to load the horses and get into the car, where I could finally breathe in and out and start figuring out the new girl. To begin with, the name, oh my f****ng god. Martin is a classical Estonian name for BOYS. I think I checked her name multiple times before I dared to address her. She gave off this stereotypical American I-am-too-cool-for-you-vibes, which didn’t surprise me. A couple of minutes in I realized that I was wrong, it wasn’t arrogance, more like confidence. She was chill and had a great sense of humor. I also understood that she was exhausted from her travels and had a full workday on top of that. Axelle started ranting about this Santa Claus village, I do not remember why or what was the context around it but it lasted for almost the whole car trip.
We got to the starting point, took the horses out of the trailer and started mounting. I rode Herkules, a lovely horse who one time took off with me while I was halfway up on the saddle. Interestingly I didn’t freak out when horses acted stupid in Iceland, but when things like this happened in Estonia, my heart wanted to exit my body and my legs shivered for ten minutes after whatever shit went down. Here for some reason I didn’t care. We started mounting and Herkules acted like a sweetheart. Suddenly something flinched in the corner of my eye and I saw Zorro taking off with Martin. “Shit, shit, shit” crossed my mind while Zorro was just running like chased by a pack of hyenas. Elisa yelled something and we followed slowly with our horses until Martin managed to give Zorro the message to slow down which Zorro executed as a full-stop and Martin fell in front of the horse. After making sure that she was okay, the girls insisted on putting Martin on Nagli which felt a bit sketchy to me but I held my opinion back. Ofc I was right and poor Martin got another hold-on-for-your-dear-life from Nagli. After that, I totally understood that Martin wanted to take a time-out. Although looking back on our amazing ride to Reykjadalur, I feel like we would have had a total blast if Martin would have had some time to rest during the day and still joined us in the evening. But life is what it is and the boss took Martin back while we continued our journey. Then I didn’t realize that I had left such an impression on Martin, but I am glad I redeemed myself later.
Me trying to dry my pants while walking back because I forgot to take some dry underwear
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