I’m not sure that either one of us could say why exactly we landed on Iceland when it came to planning our summer trip. We knew that we’d have 1-2 weeks in mid-May, and that we didn’t want to waste too much of that time on initial traveling (which very quickly ruled out the idea of New Zealand). Ashley does a lot of hiking in Arizona, I like nature photography, and we both really wanted to go waterfall hunting.
After a lot of research, scouring pictures online, and mapping out drives, we came up with a 10-day trip that would bring us around the outside of the entire country and take us to many of the most spectacular sights in a place that’s absolutely full of them. We will be writing detailed individual posts for each day, and the links below will go live as the posts go up.
Day 3: Kerid Crater, Seljalandsfoss, Skógafoss, Vik
Day 4: Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon, Skaftafell and Svartifoss, Glacier Lagoon
Day 5: Seyðisfjörður, Hengifoss
Day 6: Dettifoss, Selfoss, Myvatn, Godafoss
Day 8: Whale watching in Húsavík
Day 10: Hraunfossar, Barnafoss, Kirkjufellsfoss
Day 11: Horseback ride and home
Conclusion – What we’d do differently
We knew we would be renting a car regardless of where we would be staying, and quickly decided we wanted to get a camper van instead of finding and paying for hotels, hostels or B&Bs, especially because we didn’t want to be constricted by check-in times.
There are several big companies in Iceland that rent out camper vans, but we elected to go with KuKu Campers. They offer multiple sizes and styles of vans to rent. We went with a 2WD, three-person van (style AA), and paid a little extra for an automatic. The model we chose couldn’t drive the F roads, but at the time of year that we went, they weren’t even open yet, so it was a non-issue for us. It did handle some pretty steep, rough roads with no problem though (the same can’t be said for my anxiety as the driver). Split between the two of us, we each ended up paying about $920 for the van, which again, doubled as both transportation and accommodation over 11 days.
Our Icelandic mobile home
The KuKu vans come with camp stoves and some basic dishes and cooking utensils, and there is the option for extras such as gas for the stove, coolers, camp chairs, a GPS, and much more. It had cigarette lighters and a USB port for charging phones and cameras, and an AUX port for playing music while driving. There was also a separate, internal heating unit for the sleeping part of the van which ran on a separate battery we could use throughout the night without rendering the van undrivable for the next day. KuKu also gave us a discount card to one of the major gas stations with locations all across the country, which gave us a discount on gas, free coffee, and a discount on some of the food they sold in their stores.
A few other things to mention… While it may seem easy to just find a parking lot and stay there for the night, it’s now a law in Iceland that you have to stay at campgrounds, which are fortunately all over the place. We bought a camping card which gave us access to a certain number of sites, and very quickly paid itself off – it was definitely cheaper to buy the card instead of paying per person each night.
While a lot of the campgrounds and most of the gas stations and restaurants had free Wi-Fi, we both ended up putting international data on our phones, and that gave us our own GPS to use instead of having to rent one separately. It made it easy to stay in touch with our families back home, let us consult maps and Google while we were in the middle of nowhere, and it let me deal with some unfortunately timed school scheduling. I think we’d both say that it was worth it.
One final thought – we went mid-to-late May. Technically, that’s before the summer tourist season starts. While not all of the campgrounds we would have liked to stay at were open, we thought it ended up being the perfect time to go. There was very little traffic, we never had issues getting spots at campgrounds, there weren’t huge crowds around even the most popular sites, and the weather was perfect. The only downside to Iceland in the (early) summer? The midnight sun is a very real thing, and for two girls who are just too far south in Michigan to ever see the Northern lights, it meant that even in the place where you’re almost guaranteed to see them, no Northern Lights for us.
Total cost per person, including airfare from Chicago to Reykjavik: $2850
Iceland in one photo – mountains, snow, waterfalls, and sheep
