Icelandic Adventure

Hi Travelers! The most recent trip I’ve taken is a week-long journey to Iceland, and my goal for this post is to give you guys the tools required to take this adventure yourselves. I can’t recommend visiting this country enough, it is truly the most incredible, beautiful, and shocking place I’ve ever been, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Tourism in Iceland has been rapidly increasing – in 2010, the country only saw about half a million tourists, but in 2017 there was over two million. This is pretty significant, especially considering the population is only about 300,000!

My best friend and I decided that we wanted an adventure, but since we are two broke college students, we didn’t have a lot of money to drop on a vacation. Lucky enough though, flights to Iceland are (comparatively) very cheap. Another way to limit cost and really dive into the theme of the outdoors is to camp rather than pay for lodging. Hotels and even hostels run at VERY high rates, so renting a tent for 6 nights saved us around $700 each. Likewise, restaurants as well as any kind of tour passes are very expensive, so we chose to pack the food we would be eating in our suitcases, and journey through Iceland alone together. We chose to rent a car, and I cannot recommend it enough. This way, you are in total control of how long you want to spend at a given destination, as well as explore more parts of the country that big tour busses wouldn’t necessarily go to.

We spent every day hiking the most incredible trails, visiting breathtaking beaches/cliff sides, and relaxing in geothermal rivers (just to name a few activities!). The majority of the trip will take place along the northern peninsula and southern coast, as these are the places most accessible by driving a standard car. I’ll be outlining everything we did so that you can do this for yourself. Just a warning, if spending 100% of your time outside, or hiking about 10 miles a day doesn’t make you want to book your ticket, this itinerary may not be for you…

TRANSPORTATION 

Flight 

WowAir and IcelandAir are going to be your cheapest airline choices, and depart out of most major airports. A tip would be to look at the weekly schedule in order to find when the cheapest time is to depart and come back home to save, in some cases, a couple hundred dollars. The airport you’ll be flying into is Keflavik, which is about a 45 min away from Reykjavik.

Rental Car

The best way to get around Iceland is with a rental car. There are lots of different options of rental agencies, but I found that Ace Car Rental and SADcars are the cheapest, especially if you book in advance. You’ll pick the keys and car up right at Keflavik.

LODGING

Like I stated above, the best and cheapest way to experience Iceland is by camping. You can rent tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and even a gas stove if you would like. The best place to rent these goods are at Iceland Camping and Equipment Rental, right in Reykjavik. There are many campsites all over the southern coast, most of which include amenities such as bathrooms, showers, and communal kitchens. Listed below are the campsites we stayed at, all of which provided a great camping experience, at only (on average) $12 a night.

Campsites

• Grundarfjörður campsite – right in town, it’s a large grassy field with some great views
• Seljalandsfoss campsite – located about 500m down from a large waterfall, you’ll be visiting is a campsite with a communal kitchen, bathrooms, and showers. You can even pitch your tent with a stunning view of the waterfall right in front of you!
• Skaftafell Campsite – This campsite offers incredible views of surrounding mountains, and has a really nice mess hall with a kitchen
• Vik Campsite – located in the quaint village of Vik, you’ll be pitching your tent right in front some very picturesque mountains.
• Reykjavik Campsite – The nicest and largest campsite you’ll stay at, located only a mile and a half from downtown Rejkjavik. It’s built to accommodate over 900 people, so it has a large communal focus. There’s picnic tables, multiple showers and bathrooms, outdoor grills, kitchens, and even Wi-Fi.

FOOD

Eating out in Iceland is very expensive, so pack your food in your suitcase! We brought a 24 pack of granola bars, travel peanut butter packets, beef jerky, and instant coffee. It wasn’t the tastiest but it was sustainable enough to provide us with enough energy each day!

ACTIVITIES

All the activities listed below involve visiting some of the most stunning landscapes you’ll ever see. Each one is so different from the next, that you’ll never tire of hiking around to visit them all. Some locations listed below you can just park right in front of and take a look, but most involve a significant hike to get to.

• Snaefellsnes Penninsula
  • Arnarstapi
  • Black Pearl Beach
  • Golden Beach
  • Kirkjufellsfoss Waterfall
• The Golden Circle
  • Thingvellir National Park
  • Gullfoss Waterfall
  • Seljalandsfoss Waterfall
• Skogafoss Waterfall
• Bruarfoss waterfall
• Dyrholaey Rock Formation
• Fjadrargljufur – Grassy Canyon Valley
• Svartifoss Waterfall
• Svinafellsjokull Glacier
• Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon
• Diamond Beach
• Seltun Geothermal Area
• Reykjadalur Geothermal River

HIDDEN GEM

I’ve listed above the places that we visited in chronological order, but the drives in between each place are absolutely stunning. There will be a bunch of small turnoffs that you can park your car along the main road in Iceland, so you can choose to get out and really take it all in whenever you’d like. Some of my favorite memories of the trip are stepping out of the car and just being completely alone in front of mountains/glaciers/cliff-sides/everything you can possibly imagine!