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The land of fire and ice, as they say, has in recent years been making every effort to raise its profile in the world of travel. It is a land situated on the ridgeline between two continental plates, and as such is covered in both active and ancient geological activity.
From deep pockets of lava-filled caverns super-heating veins of aqueous springs and streams - to majestic surface features lifting those flows of water to hundreds of feet in the air to plummet over sharp cliffs of fantastical stone formations, or tumbling over long, stretched out rocky routes to the depths below - to the crisp skies themselves uninhibited by high urban centers whose light pollution obscures the beauty of nature that the heavens provide at such northern latitudes -- amongst all of this lies scattered a few pockets of human civilization, living in apparent harmony with the nature within which it is situated.
All over Iceland, its people and its government value the untouched beauty and equilibrium of its sensitive lands. It is illegal to drive various classes of cars on certain classes of roads (for instance, "F"-roads are legally restricted to 4-wheel drive vehicles). It's illegal to go off-roading, to drive off designated roadways and properties, so you must be careful where you explore. If you're on foot, it's highly discouraged to tread off trails on land not set aside for human visitors. Because of this, most everywhere you look across the island you will see raw, pristine, unaffected natural features on which no person has set foot.
Iceland - the entire island - boasts a population of just over 300,000. That's barely larger than my hometown of Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario. That's smaller than Winnipeg, Manitoba. Even than Wichita, Kansas. Not only is the vast island sparsely populated, with half its humans alone in the region of Reykjavik, but Iceland is small; smaller than you would think, given how much the island has to offer!
To connect the people, the island is routed by one main road, the "Ring Road" #1. For the most part, it's a major paved road, but there are a number of distant segments which turn to gravel. Often people drive at higher speeds unprepared for the sudden change in road grading, and so accidents are not an uncommon sight.
Speed limits are relatively standard and conservative. City streets are typically 50-70kph, and smaller towns with higher foot traffic are often spotted with significant speed bumps and even lower limits, while major roads are raised to 80 and 90kph.
Being covered in mountains, glaciers, volcanoes and craters, with vast spans of flat land and lava fields between, situated alone in the North Atlantic Ocean, the climate may be fairly balanced hovering between a few degrees below to a few degrees above zero celsius in November, but the weather - it can change in an instant. One minute you may be looking up to or driving through a cloudless sunny sky, and the next you're hit by blizzard, or torrential rain, dense fog, high winds, or hail. In my stay, I experienced all of the above, each having at least once instance of lasting merely a few minutes.
It's prudent to be prepared for such changes at a moment's notice, especially while driving! Road.is is an essential website to bookmark and check throughout your trip, as it provides a live report of road conditions, drivability, wind and weather; useful even in the summer, since inland regions can still be hit by inclement weather and snow storms.
Whatever time of year, whichever season you visit the country, unique experiences await! At its northern latitude, summer even provides a short period of midnight sun in the far north- the tilt of the Earth means the sun doesn't set below the horizon in a full day cycle. In contrast, in the depths of winter, the sun barely peaks above the horizon putting the country in perpetual darkness, with as little as 4 hours of low sunlight. Though much colder, winter months provide the best opportunities to experience the Northern Lights in their full glory, while summer months open up the landscape to amazing vistas which can stretch for miles and miles across the island.
Iceland also boasts a rich history dating back to pre-western civilization, when Vikings roamed the seas. Those initial explorers settled here in the cold lands, little knowing how much history they were creating as they continued their expeditions west. Iceland knows its past well, maintaining many historic sites, through markers and memorials, to medieval sagas and legends of heroism and bravery, to protected ruins of past civilization and activity. Many of these sites are popular tourist destinations and many remain obscure, hidden from common visitation. Ask the locals - they will be more than happy to share what they know of their land, and their family lineage (like the Bjarnarhofn Shark Museum, an entirely family run business which I visited later in the trip).
Iceland has made news in recent years. Most notably in 2010, when a volcano literally placed the island on the map in the minds of many worldwide. Not only did this volcano's eruption disrupt flight activity from North America to Europe and blot out the skies of a significant portion of the European continent, but its own name became something of an internet meme. Eyjafjallajökull, a wonderfully complex example of the Icelandic language, had many news reporters' tongues twisted as they attempted to report on the eruption. Meme after meme jesting at the labyrinthine grammar of the Icelandic language spread across the net, and not necessarily placing this rustic country in a flattering spotlight.
But really, with a little bit of research and practice, Icelandic is quite endearing. Pronunciation is fairly straight-forward and phonetic once you know the alphabet and their basic sounds. Then after you've looked at many of the place names across the island, you see how well-constructed its words and names are, and begin to spot the common components. Reading, however, is just the first step. Understanding the spoken word another, and it's a big leap, across a wide chasm, reaching untold depths, to fluently speaking it.
Icelanders love their language, and they know how funky it is! Thankfully, most everywhere you travel across the country, the people speak English quite well and take no real issue with conversing in their second language. Additionally, many common road signs are pictographic with simple designs, which make it much easier for foreign visitors who may not even speak English to understand important places and signals. Nonetheless, it's prudent to get acquainted with the dialect and many common words. Other internet resources such as I Heart Reykjavik and Wikitravel are invaluable!
If you're very digitally-minded, you needn't worry about mobile phone and data coverage. Iceland has three major carriers (Siminn, Vodafone, and Nova) providing 3G coverage over most every part of the island where people regularly travel. As a Canadian with Rogers as my carrier, my Roam Like Home package allowed me $10/day to use my existing plan with another provider, and Iceland was included. All of that together meant that even when I was up 1100m on the mountain of Kristinartindar, I had a strong data signal to share photos and videos.
Coverage isn't an issue unless you're going extreme inland or enclosed locations. But always check with your home provider first to find out what their roaming options are. Alternatively, you could go with a common strategy of buying a pay-as-you-go native phone in Iceland and find a cheap plan with data you find sufficient. Or you could simply turn off roaming and live off any free wifi you can find as you travel.
After some economic difficulty, recent efforts to boost tourism in Iceland have helped its reputation. Of course, such a dramatic change to this "small-town" country doesn't come with a lot of political disagreement amongst its multi-party governmental system (including the Pirate Party) and its citizens. However, it was precisely because of a local news report announcing amazingly and wonderfully priced flights to Paris via Iceland, including a layover of any desired length in Iceland en route, that I turned my attention and began researching the feasibility of a somewhat impromptu vacation to Europe.
The two major Icelandic airlines, Iceland Air and WOW Airlines, offer flights out of a number of major North American cities, including Toronto, Ontario. When I went searching for prices, they had dates with one-way flights to or from Paris via Iceland as low as $120 CAD. They advertise cheap bare-bones flights, but provide additional features and services with fees for those who prefer the flexibility in their pricing.
And so, my summer of Icelandic research and excitement began.
As I describe my experience planning for this trip below, keep in mind that mine was a solo one. Expenses are based on a single person traveler unless otherwise noted, so scale it accordingly if you are considering a trip with more people! Iceland isn't cheap, but it's definitely worthwhile to shop around for lowest prices and deals.
With WOW Air, there isn't much of a price difference between a flight to Paris via Iceland and a flight just to Iceland. After watching the prices fluctuate for a few weeks, I decided to forgo the full trip to Paris, and instead stay in Iceland and have more time to enjoy its wide buffet of adventures.
My deadline to decide arrived and I locked in a flight with the cheapest prices at that time on dates I could manage, which sat at $140 CAD to Iceland, and $200 return. Alone, that didn't offer much room for luggage, with allowance for only a small carryon (enough perhaps for a weekend vacation, but not a multi-day trip to Iceland!). I opted for an additional 20kg checked bag at $60, both ways. That brought my 6-hour flight there and back to $460.
An effort to make sure nothing needed for the trip was forgotten. Laying it out certainly helped determine how to optimize packing for size and weight!The length of the trip, however - 4 days - didn't leave much room for a well-rounded vacation! In addition, my trip would be at the end of November, nearing mid-winter. As I mentioned earlier, there are benefits and drawbacks for visiting Iceland at any time of the year. Winter or summer, the country offers vastly different experiences.
In the winter, while many tours are closed, many are cheaper due to slower tourist activity, as with hotels and other activities. Driving can also be more precarious given the weather.
Generally, many visitors opt for the usual tourist schedule: Book a hotel, enjoy its amenities, book a few tours (the Blue Lagoon being the most popular attraction), use transit or rent a car and maybe spend some time out on the town; a fairly standard vacation package. In this country however, that can very quickly become an expensive proposition! Compared to its neighbouring countries, restaurant fare is outlandishly expensive, fuel is about twice the price, hotels and hostels can eat a hole in your pocket unless you're comfortable living rough, and tours being so popular can also cost an arm and a leg.
The alternative: strike out on your own custom-designed adventure!
If you're willing to be your own tour guide, you can rent a vehicle and enjoy the country on your own schedule and your own dime, passing up the guidance of commercial tours, doing your own research and planning. If you want to drive around more than just the cities and main ring road, you'll want to do some online searching and asking around for deals on car or sport utility vehicles with 4WD, regardless of season. In my research I narrowed down reasonable options to Blue Car Rental, Sad Cars, and Car Rentals In Iceland.
It's not just a matter of finding a cheap base price, but considering insurance options as well. It's recommended that you make use of insurance offered by rental agencies, who know best what surprises may lurk around Icelandic corners. Depending on the time of year, you'd need to consider sand, dirt, gravel, even ash protection, plus standard coverage, and other basic options. In the winter, all rental vehicles also come equipped with studded tires to help combat the unpredictable weather.
I ended up renting through Car Rentals In Iceland, a proxy for other rental agencies, but who offer a significant discount, and provide a shuttle between Keflavic airport and their office. The cheapest vehicle I found was in their list: an old model Ford Escape or similar. Suffice to say, the Escape held up strong and tough through the four days, earning it the name Hrunting - after the rare and ancient, battle-worn sword given to Beowulf to defeat Grendel's mother. Hrunting did not disappoint!
My rental for 4 days came to a total expense of €301, or about $440 CAD (including a €44 online reservation deposit). This was by far the cheapest SUV I found online, but I felt that the service provided by the agency and its staff was quite sufficient for my minimalist tastes, and I had no issues at any point in the rental process, or with the rental (beyond typical age effects: occasionally Hrunting gave me a little huff and puff on startup). For an independent adventure, I'd certainly recommend them.
The one other thing you'll need to consider if renting a vehicle - the fuel prices (diesel and petrol) are exorbitant. As of my late November 2016 trip, gas was equivalent to $2.30/litre. At home, the price was hovering around $1.05. You will most certainly need to include a heavy line in the budget for fuel if you intend to explore much of the island.
My 4-day mileage haul of about 1600km came to a fuel cost of around $420.
Unsurprisingly, you have a few options for your living style during your stay in Iceland. You can dish out oodles of krona for hotel digs (which of course will come with wonderful vacation services and bonuses), and you do get what you pay for. In researching vacation packages, the usual tourist plans are very, very enticing. But if you're planning to live off nickels and dimes out of pocket, relatively speaking, such venues are out of the question.
A second option is to seek out bed & breakfasts, smaller motels and hostels. Airbnb can provide options ranging in price from $30 a night to hundreds. You'll have a wide variety of locations all across the country to help you plan a travel schedule, and they can range from bare-bones single-bed rooms to fully decked out B&B and feature rich hotels.
A third option, for the hardy-spirited, is to live out of your car for as long as you can bare it! Iceland does allow roadside parking at designated parking areas, or as long it's not private property without permission -- but for the love of all that is good and sane do not stop at the side of the road where there are two lanes and no shoulder! (read about that experience here). Traffic can be sparse, but close to the main ring road it is active 24/7.
Camping is another option, though designated camping locations are limited. RV rentals are available from some agencies (like Go Campers Iceland, or Campervan Iceland) for those who would like to have a slightly less rough road trip. You can purchase a camping card which provides you access to 41 campsites (with tenting areas) around the island, for a 28-day period. For my four-day trip however, this clearly would have been overkill.
My plan: after each day's schedule, find the nearest available parking area, batten down, bundle up in warm wrappings, catch up on photos and Facebook, and get a decent, though short, essential night's sleep in the back of the SUV.
The reality: after the first night, getting only a couple of hours of scattered shut-eye over 6 hours in one cold spot, my nights became a series of more comfortable power naps between short travel stretches until day broke. Power naps over the long term would certainly be a bad idea, but for a couple of days, it was much more refreshing and mentally resetting than the discomfort of being cold, cramped, and confined for multiple hours. This way, Hrunting was much more accommodating.
If you intend to enjoy fine dining or relaxed sit-down venues for your mealtime nourishment, expect to be paying upwards of $50 CAD per person per meal. A common recommendation for those doing their own thing is to visit the grocery store (Bónus is a major franchise) and stock up on quick simple food for the road.
To illustrate, I had one casual dining lunch planned at Hamborgarafabrikkan (Hamburger Factory), a quaint, normal restaurant. I ordered the Animal Park burger (very good, by the way!) priced at 2,995 krona, with fries and a drink.
The meal came to $42.
For the rest of my trip, I relied on large bottled beverages, cookies, fruit, and basic sandwich fare - ham and cheese with mayo on sliced bread. With a few other essentials, my grocery store haul came to about $60. For one person, that selection (plus a drink or snack here and there) lasted until my return to the airport for departure. That's much more reasonable financially, but you'll need to be able to mentally survive on minimalist meals at that price! In Iceland, even fast food is a splurge. A Quiznos sub itself can run you 1400 krona (around $17 CAD).
One trip to Iceland will never suffice.
That's the mindset I settled on while picking and choosing what would compose my road trip's itinerary. You can search the internet for recommended sites to see, tours to try, and places to party, but one thing that is common to all reviews and recommendations - there is always more to experience.
Whether it's geological wonders or the native night life, you'll need to prioritize and choose what you wish to do most, and if you don't want to stress about your travel plan, be satisfied however the schedule presents itself! For myself, with a high priority being to keep costs low, I decided to focus primarily on the road trip. My goal was to take the 4 days and 3 nights to travel the circumference of the island along Road 1, stopping occasionally to take in only a few of the more desirable, unique, or obscure sites along the way. Completing the route would be my mission, so no matter the stops I could rest easy and enjoy the experience. (I already decided another trip would be in order to experience more of all the things I'd be missing!)
One of the first things I actually wanted to do was to record a time lapse dashcam video documenting the drive around the island - a video capturing the wide variety of weather and road conditions, and of course the stunning landscapes. However, in the end my schedule didn't work out as I'd hoped, thanks to my underestimation, and I wasn't able to complete the Ring Road trip in full, but the dashcam video of my stay in Iceland did turn out- I think, quite well. You can view the video linked in the footer of this website, with more details about the technical setup in the video's description (on Youtube).
If you haven't yet heard about this increasingly popular worldwide outdoors pastime, then here is a (very) brief summary of the hobby:
No really, it's an outdoor activity wherein a geocacher uses a GSP device (whether a dedicated GPS unit or a smartphone, most of which now come equipped with GPS capability, many actually quite advanced) to play a real-world scavenger hunt, traveling to GPS coordinates at locations where you get to find...something, and have exciting adventures along the way. Ideally!
Geocaches worldwide are listed online, and generally speaking can be found for free, by anyone, anywhere, any time. This hobby has been around since May 2000 (already over 16 years as of this writing!) and is enjoyed by millions across the globe, with millions of caches to be found in most every country. Because of that, it's also a wonderful resource for finding great places to visit, especially while on vacation!
Whether it's to find a neat container, or to be taken to a stunning location, or even to meet people in this growing and connected community, geocaching is a hobby any traveler should look into adopting! The primary website for the activity is Geocaching.com where you can create an account for free and start right away browsing their listings.
As a geocacher, the first place I turned to in researching places to visit in Iceland was the geocaching map. Iceland hosts almost 700 cache listing (this is actually quite sparse), but most of them are in and around the already quite popular tourist destinations. If you can think of a recommended place to visit in Iceland, you'll likely find a cache listed within 100m. Sure enough, any recommended tour destination I found in Iceland was already referenced in some manner in a nearby geocache listing. It was this map of adventures that informed my scheduled stops for my circumnavigation of the island.
In addition to geocache listings themselves, those who find them also post logs online about their experiences. You could read reviews on TripAdvisor, but you can also read hands-on experiences by anyone who has visited the locations, many of whom are experienced travelers and outdoors folk. For the most part, the listings can be far more informative overall, and they may come with very timely instructions and guidance for accessing the location, reports on weather, the sights, additional costs - and the photo galleries can be extremely fun to peruse, and informative.
In the following pages you'll see many references to geocache listings on geocaching.com which led me to the locations I visited, from the extremely popular to the obscure and risky. I highly recommend creating a free account so you can read all the detailed information that geocaching.com provides about them.
For more specifics regarding my geocaching plans for the trip, please check out this page.
| Continents and Caves |
| Missed Opportunities | Geocaching! |
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