Iceland – Thoughts on Our Trip

I wanted to share some thoughts on our trip now that we’re back and my brain has had some time to process it.

Overall it was an amazing trip and I would definitely go back! This isn’t a place where I felt “I’d like to live here”, but I would love to return in the future and do more hiking. Pete says he doesn’t think he would want to go back. He chalks it up to two things: the cost of everything, and getting sick in the cold weather. I can understand his reasoning. I also still want to go somewhere to see the Northern Lights. You can’t see them in the summertime in Iceland because it doesn’t get dark.

Land of the Midnight Sun

That’s another interesting thing to note. Sunset was around 11pm, and sunrise around 3am. It didn’t get fully dark in between those hours, but it was certainly dimmer. In the fjords, depending on how you’re positioned, you may not see sunset / sunrise either because it happens on the other side of mountains. I had hoped for more sunsets, but we had three challenges: (a) I can’t easily stay up that late, (b) mountains were often in the way, and (c) it was often too cloudy.

Costs

Everything in Iceland is pricey during the tourist season. It’s better once you get out of the capital, but only slightly. For example, a burger is about $25 and doesn’t come with any sides. A cocktail is about $30 in Reykjavik, and about $25 elsewhere. We knew this ahead of time and brought breakfast items and snacks for the road, as well as wine, all of which helped our costs some. We started out trying to skimp at meals, but eventually gave up and figured we’d deal with it when we got back. I think if you wanted to buy groceries and cook, you could save money – people who rent camper vans do this a lot, I think. For us, it was too hard since we were moving residences almost every day and we were tired.

Rental Car Insurance

If you rent a car, you absolutely want to get all of the insurance possible. The wind can be so strong that it flings the doors open. The gravel can get kicked up and break a windshield, which happened to us early in the trip. Fortunately the windshield crack never spidered, so we didn’t lose any time having to have it repaired or replaced. And we were fully covered.

After researching, we rented a Toyota RAV4 from Blue Car and it was perfect.

Parking

Speaking of cars and costs – almost every major sight has a paid parking lot. It may be only a few dollars, but you’re always doing the math in your head (or on your phone) to try and figure out the currency conversion. Most are probably $10ish, but it adds up. There are cameras that take photos of your license plate when you enter the parking lot. If you don’t pay, you’ll get billed, and that bill will be passed along from the rental car company to you. And the cost will be much higher than if you had paid at the lot. We had this happen a few times and the bills/fees were around $25 each.

Clothing

I’m very glad we brought a waterproof outer layer. I really only wore the pants at some of the waterfalls and at Geysir, but I wore that waterproof coat everywhere. It is think but blocked a lot of the wind too. As for layers, we wore up to three: a base layer (wool or cotton), a middle layer fleece + sweats or hiking pants, and when needed, the outer waterproof layer. Our hiking boots were awesome and gave us so much better traction that sneakers did, plus they kept our feet try.

The hotels and other lodgings we rented ranged from warm very hot. The only time I was truly uncomfortably hot was in Haimeay. That room must have been 80 degrees, even with the window open. It was a nice place to stay, otherwise, but there’s no way I can recommend it due to the temperature. I hate being cold so I actually brought a heated blanket with me. I never needed it – which was good, because I hadn’t considered Europe’s higher voltage and I don’t know if it would have worked. As it was, it was a waste of space in my luggage.

We absolutely wore our fleeces, coats, gloves, face masks, and wool socks to stay warm! Outside, the temps ranged low 40s to low 50s (Fahrenheit) for the daytime highs, and a bit cooler at night, especially in the north. My thick coat actually has heat, but I never turned it on. It was warm enough just with the thickness of the coat. (It’s left over from when my daughter used to ice skate.)

The other absolutely necessary items we wore were the mosquito nets for our heads. The midges in Mývatn are really thick! In fact, Mývatn means “midge lake”. They are non-biting, thankfully. The area supposedly also has biting black flies, but we didn’t encounter anything that bit. Still, without a net, you’ve got them in your eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouth. It’s not fun. I know this because I removed the net a few times so I could more easily access my camera.

Driving

The Ring Road is generally paved all the way around, but in some places the pavement has washed away and the road becomes gravel. I guess it’s just really hard to maintain asphalt in that kind of climate.

Iceland is not big on guard rails. They have them, but inconsistently. Driving in the East Fjords is a bit white-knuckle-y per my husband… I played passenger princess except where the drive was easy. (Except the windshield crack and then a bad rainstorm did happen while I was driving!) The road to Seydisfjordur was a little scary as it went over a mountain pass, and the one to Borgarfjörður eystri had a lot of switchbacks too. For both of those, we lucked into having good visibility.

Our worst drive was out to Siglufjörður. First of all, we messed up the Google maps and ended up driving an hour out of our way on a gravel road with lots of dropoffs. It made no sense in hindsight. Then we were driving along the beachside cliffs with too few guardrails and asphalt turning into gravel way too often and in the worst places (like the top of a blind hill). Also, we had to go through two tunnels that were a single lane, but bi-directional. One side has the right-of-way. The other side has periodic pull-outs where you’re required to pull over and let the side with the right-of-way pass. At first, we stopped way too soon, but after a while, Pete realized that the pull-outs happened often enough that we could skip one or two before giving way. Oh, did I mention one of those tunnels is 5km long? And we had to take the tunnel and the scary road to get back out of the town the next day.

Pete also drove us to the top of Dyrhólaey cliffs, while I kept my eyes closed and prayed the whole way up. It was quite foggy, which made the drive scarier, and then you couldn’t see anything from the top due to the fog anyway. Ugh,