The Travel BuddhaAdmittedly, having a hot picnic lunch is a bit unnecessary. I know it. I could easily forgo a hot styrofoam bowl of ramen or a warm pouch of freeze dried chili, but I don’t want to. Even though we’ll be visiting Iceland in early June, I’m going to suppose that the weather could still be quite cool and potentially rainy or misty. Man… the idea of a quick, hot meal is way more appealing to me than a sandwich and an apple. So, that’s my motivation.
Originally, I had planned to bring my fuel-top mini camp stove to Iceland (pictured to the left). For an item that cost me less than $15USD, it’s awesome. I’ve had it for five years and have never had any issues with it. It worked flawlessly, quickly boiling water on a windy backcountry cliffside campsite in the Porcupine Mountains. However, after more thought, I really don’t want to go the camp stove / fuel option while in Iceland.
My primary reason is that we will doing a ton of driving between sightseeing locations and I don’t want to have to use any time stopping to heat water with a flame stove. We’re planning to eat our lunch on the go while driving or hiking. It would be great to heat up my water while enroute to our next waterfall allowing me time to chowdown a hot meal in the parking lot or while my wife takes the wheel. I started looking into small, lightweight alternative options.
After looking around a bit, I purchased this immersion heating element to bring along to heat/boil water while on the road. I figured we could use this to heat water for some of the camping meals we will be bringing for lunch and to make hot chocolate or coffee while we’re out and about. The reviews are a bit mixed, and I haven’t had the chance to test it out yet, but I’m hoping this will do the job. If this thing takes forever to heat the water or starts a fire, I may revert back to my original plan.