Category: Iceland

I had been planning my second trip to Iceland ever since the first one – the places I’d return to, the sites I’d make time for that I had previously missed, the method of getting around, what time of year, and so on. Nearly every site in Iceland is the kind of place that would be a highlight anywhere else, so while I liked the idea of having no real plan and no reservations, I ended up doing plenty of research and mapping out the coordinates of everywhere I wanted to go. We still had no reservations, so there was flexibility if we wanted it, but I also appreciated having a plan to sort of guide us along the way. Overall, it turned out fantastic, but below are the real high points for us, and the things that were better in thought than in practice.

The Highlights

When looking back at this trip, the moments that stand out in my mind the most are the ones where we got away from the crowds. While Iceland is no New York City or Paris, it does have its fair share of tourists these days, and crowds of people are not what you’re looking for when you’re taking in beautiful landscapes and nature. The first place we visited that gave us that wonderful combination of solitude and that “WOW” kind of beauty was…

Aldeyjarfoss – A stunning blue waterfall being forced through a narrow opening between tan basalt columns. The contrast of colors here, the rather barren surroundings, the cool rock formations made this just a truly unique waterfall. It was a long detour to get there which deterred most people, so we got to just sit directly across from it and enjoy its magnificence. The beautiful sunshine we had that day didn’t hurt either.

Continuing clockwise, the rest of the highlights were…

The East Fjords – I 100% fell in love with the fjords. Seyðisfjörður was an idyllic little town, Mjóifjörður offered the most stunning views and weather the whole way through, and just zig-zagging through, driving along the coast through the fjords was heavenly. Where mountains and ocean meet, magic happens. Dreams of spending my summers in Mjóifjörður or Seyðisfjörður will be following me for quite awhile, I expect. They also made me feel like I need to come back to see the Westfjords next!

Jökulsárlón – The only real touristy place on this list, and I think part of it was due to low expectations. Jökulsárlón was pretty “meh” to us the first time we visited. It had been overcast and dreary and the shoreline was packed with photographers and their tripods. This time, the sun shone brilliantly on the ice, seals were swimming around, and it was just so much more spectacular than we had remembered. A pleasant surprise.

Þakgil – Absolutely, the best campground I can imagine. As with most of our favorite sites, I almost decided to not go due to the effort in getting there. I was sick, and we had to drive about an hour on a rough gravel road over a mountain with the wind howling in order to get there. But the views the entire way were out of this world, and once we reached the peaceful little valley, the sun shone and the wind calmed. We hiked through flowers and berries and across streams to climb up and get a view of the area. The campground was beautiful and had a neat little kitchen in a cave. It was my happy place.

 

Kvernufoss – We almost didn’t find this waterfall. Through persistence and luck, we just happened to find the river that eventually led us the rest of the way, all the while Anthony was teasing me about trying so hard to find just yet another waterfall in Iceland. But then we reached it, and we had it completely to ourselves, and it was just beautiful. It slammed into the rocks underneath it, the sound almost deafening close to it. There was a little path behind it, but even being 50 feet in front of it, we were getting soaked. There are countless spectacular waterfalls in Iceland, but Kvernufoss was my favorite of them all.

Gjáin – There was nothing specific here to just blow you away, but as soon as I looked over the edge down into this little waterfall-and-river-filled valley, it felt like a special place to me. An easy place to explore and enjoy the natural world. It would be a fabulous spot for a picnic on a nice day, listening to the water flowing around you and the birds chirping.

What I Would Do Differently

Sleeper Car – This one pains me to say because I adored our little Jimny, and the top tent was such a fast and easy solution to camping. However, the top tent somehow leaked during the day causing us to have a sopping wet mattress a few nights. While I still don’t think we would have wanted to spend the time putting up and tearing down an actual tent every day, I think having a bigger vehicle with a mattress inside to sleep would have been nice.

Bring a Hairdryer – I always try to pack light when traveling, and while camping around Iceland, this seemed even more of a necessity. I rarely even blow-dry my hair in my day-to-day life, so why would I think I needed to while living out of a car?! Thus, the hairdryer stayed home. After my first shower while camping, though, when I had to go sleep in my cold top-tent with wet hair, I realized my mistake. I skipped washing my hair for, like, four nights after that, and any of my fellow ladies with fine blonde hair will know that that’s a big deal. Some of the public pools/paid hot springs do have hairdryers provided in the bathrooms, so if you find those, you’ll be ok. I didn’t realize this until the end, though. But at least I did bring dry shampoo which was a life saver.

Do a Tour – To be fair, I did try to do a tour. I had booked a helicopter ride for us as an elaborate present to ourselves, but the weather didn’t work out either of the days we were in Reykjavik. I think having something to break up the drive-hike-camp routine is a good idea. Don’t get me wrong, the drive-hike-camp routine is a great one in Iceland, but it’s still nice to have something different to do at some point on your trip, whether that’s snorkeling or horseback riding or whale watching.

 

I loved this trip. Iceland is beautiful and interesting, and we had a good amount of adventure. I think the most important thing when planning a similar one is to have some flexibility in your schedule, pack plenty of layers and water-proof gear, and be prepared by checking the weather and road closures every day. Things will almost certainly go wrong as they tend to do while traveling, but just adjust and enjoy!!

The four of us decided to head a little north on day 10 to visit Gjáin. But first, since we were already in Flúðir, I wanted to check out a tiny hot spring Anthony and I had visited last time, Hrunalaug. I had read shortly after our first visit that some tourists had trashed the place and that people should stop visiting, so my purpose was to just see it and snap a couple pictures. But as we got closer, we noticed there were a couple small signs showing people how to get there which seemed odd if the owners didn’t really want tourists there anymore. And then we arrived, and it looked like the little “changing room” part had been kind of rebuilt and looked nice.

A different couple was leaving as we got there. The boys decided they didn’t feel like getting in, but after seeing it, Theresa and I made the decision to change and hop in. I have to say, it was my favorite hot spring of the trip. It’s definitely tiny, and I could see how groups of disrespectful tourists could trash it, but having it to ourselves that morning was wonderful.

Afterward, the drive up to Gjáin included another awful gravel road, but fortunately we only had to stay on it around 3.5 km. At one point, I had to hop out and open a gate for the cars to get through, and shortly thereafter, we saw a few cars parked. As much as I like having places to myself, I was kind of happy there were other cars there because otherwise, I would have had no idea where to go.  We pulled up and looked over the edge down into this beautiful little valley filled with small waterfalls and rivers.

We climbed down and started exploring. It’s a relatively small area, but it’s the kind of place that you just want to keep climbing up cliffs and crossing rivers.

I had seen it referred to as a “magical little fairyland” before, and while we didn’t notice any fairies, I thought it was an apt description. If fairies exist, they live in Gjáin.

During our explorations, we would randomly run into each other or see each other across the way, making for a fun little game of hide and seek.

We eventually saw some darker clouds moving our way, and since we weren’t wearing our waterproof gear, we decided it was probably time to stop playing around and find our way back to our car.

Four river crossings later, we were climbing back up the steep hill to where we parked. We had planned to visit nearby Haifoss, the second tallest waterfall in Iceland, but as we were all tired of those terrible roads and had seen our fair share of waterfalls already, we decided to skip out. Instead, we drove just a couple more minutes and crossed a footbridge to visit the Viking-era longhouse, Stöng, which was an interesting little stop.

We ended up at the campground in Hveragerði for the the evening and killed some time by walking around the tiny town.

We decided to go to the local pizzeria and brewery for dinner which was really pleasant. Eating out and drinking out are both very expensive in Iceland, but this place was reasonable, and we even splurged on a couple of beers. After “roughing it” for the past over-a-week, it was nice to take it easy and treat ourselves a little bit.

But then we ventured back in the rain and climbed up into our damp top-tent for our final night of camping. After I had shivered all night long a few nights, I had bought some hand-warmers to put in my socks at night, but I was all out of those, so I was afraid I would be back to shivering all night again, but I managed to stay cozy enough.

The following day, we did the hike to the Reykjadalur hot river. The way there was uphill (and pretty steep, I might add), and it was rainy, and overall, not the most pleasant of hikes.

It took around an hour to reach it, but fortunately, we had beat the crowds. We found a spot that seemed the right temperature for us, changed into our swimsuits and climbed in.

It’s definitely a cool place, but after all the other hot springs we had visited, it was a little lack-luster.

Getting back out into the cold rain and changing was pretty miserable, but after a few minutes, we were marching back (downhill this time) to our car. The walk back took about 40 minutes. If you have bad knees, it would be pretty difficult due to the steep decline.

At last, we made our way back to Reykjavik and bought some ice cream to kill a bit of time before checking into our AirBnb.

We walked the 15 minutes back to our new little apartment, which was close to the harbor. The AirBnB was lovely, and felt like we were living in luxury after camping 9 nights. We all had a chance to take nice, hot showers and not freeze to death afterward, and then got ready to go out to dinner. There was a nice Indian restaurant not far away, so Ty got to eat Indian food for the first time (he had a lot of firsts on this trip, not all of them as pleasant as Indian food) which I can proudly say he is now a fan of.

Since it was our last night in Iceland, we decided we needed to grab a beer afterward. There was an Irish pub we had seen earlier called The Drunk Rabbit that looked like a good time. So for our last night in Iceland, we ate Indian food and drank beer at an Irish pub because why not. There was a large wheel behind the bar. Theresa asked about it, ended up paying a couple bucks to spin it, and it was looking like it was going to land on one of the many “Bad Luck” slots, but after a second delay, it ticked over one more slot into “6x Heineken,” so our decision to have a beer turned into a small party at The Drunk Rabbit.

We giddily walked back to our apartment after, getting lost along the way. We hung out listening to music until bedtime, anticipating an exhausting day of travels ahead.

Cheers to the countless memories that were created in Iceland, on our second trip to this beautiful country. Who knows if we’ll be back… There are so many wonderful places to visit on this planet… but we still haven’t gotten to see the Westfjords of Iceland ;).

We caught sunrise at Seljalandsfoss (which, by the way, the path got closed down the day after we left due to dangerous rockfalls) and checked out Gljúfrabúi once more before moving on.

And now, I think it’s time to share the story of the windshield.

When we picked up our rental car, we looked it over in the rain, determined it was good, and started heading out. We had just left the parking lot when I discovered about a 6 inch crack in the bottom middle of the windshield. So I had Anthony turn the car around to go alert them to it, afraid it was going to spread. They came out, said it was just a surface scratch and that they’d write it down, and that now we had “extra” gravel protection because a broken windshield is a broken windshield, no matter how broken it is. We accepted this and moved on.

On the second day of our roadtrip, though, we discovered it had somehow grown another 6 inches. We had been bouncing around on some rough gravel roads, but were still going well below the speed limit and definitely did not have any rocks come up and hit the windshield, so this did not bode well for the rest of our adventurous vacation. I learned I was skeptical of the “extra gravel protection” claim.

On the third day of our roadtrip, we had to go on that crazy awful road to Asbyrgi, and the crack grew another 6 inches. After this, I started cringing and second-guessing any gravel road we had to go on.

So on the eighth day of the roadtrip, we planned to go to Landmannalaugar. Landmannalaugar is in the highlands of Iceland, and most of the way there is on F roads (rough mountain roads).

It started out ok. Somehow the first F road was paved, and my spirits were high. But then we got on F208. The road seemed to just disappear at times and had washboard gravel/potholes the majority of the way. When it wasn’t washboard-teeth-chattering gravel, it was massive potholes that tossed around everything in the car. We were going about a quarter the speed limit. And so about halfway to Landmannalaugar, I very much wanted to back out and turn back to paved roads. Anthony, on the other hand, had the mindset that we had already driven all the way, we might as well finish it. I finally agreed, and we continued on.

At last we made it. I wasn’t going to risk crossing the river, so we parked in the first parking lot before it.

And I have to say, I think Landmannalaugar is probably worth that hellish drive. I’ve always thought that the pictures I had seen must be photoshopped like crazy or have some kind of filter, because they always look like paintings. But that is literally what the mountains look like in person – like paintings. I’ve never seen anything like them.

We also spent some time in the natural hot springs there on site. You can pay for a day pass at the office and use their facilities to change, but most people just strip down and change right at the water.

There was a cool river joining up with some crazy hot streams and it created a nice little balance.

We had planned to camp there that night, but since I have been freezing at night anyway, I wasn’t sure camping in the highlands was the best idea. And I have a cold. So after some time, we hopped back in the car to head back.

I was less nervous on the way back, so we enjoyed the views some more.

There were a couple lovely lakes on the way.

We ate at a delicious Ethiopian restaurant in Flúðir before driving a couple minutes to the “Secret Lagoon.” It’s not exactly secret, but it is less busy than the Blue Lagoon and was a pleasant soak, and I got a nice shower and a chance to blow dry my hair (!!!) out of the deal. When you’re camping in cold temperatures, it’s nice to have dry hair, so that alone was probably worth the price.

We met back up with Ty and Theresa and hung out at the campground, drinking some wine and sharing our stories from the day.

The windshield crack did not grow at all that day.