My friend Jess and I decided to use our holiday vacation wisely, and planned a trip to Iceland over Thanksgiving break. We traveled Saturday to Saturday, which seemed like a good duration for covering just the south shore and Reykjavik. It you plan to drive around the full island, it sounds like closer to 2 weeks is recommended. We felt like we had a good pace and only missed doing 2 things on our bucket list (dog sledding and volcanoes).
We flew Wow Airlines direct from San Francisco to Reykjavik (which I hope to be able to automatically spell by the end of this post) because they were offering a great deal. Even though we had to pay approximately $60 to carry our luggage on, it still beat Icelandair. I would describe WoW as "minimalistic." Your seat won't recline, there's no WiFi, the food is bad and expensive (bring on your own), but it's a direct flight on a normal plane that seems just as safe as any other place so it was worth saving a couple hundred dollars.
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| Nonsensical Viking wisdom |
Landing in Reykjavik at 3:30am met nothing was open but we picked up our rental car at 5am. Pro tip: wine and booze in Iceland are extremely expensive to stock up for your trip in duty free. After getting provisions, even though we had to wait around a bit, we used Iceland Car Rental. Jess had done her research on this and discovered it was the top recommendation via TripAdvisor and had good deals on SUVs (which you definitely want for winter). From the airport, we drove out to Hotel Ranga, a four star hotel near the south coast that specializes in seeing the Northern Lights without any light pollution.
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| Icelandic rustic |
Keep in mind that the population of Iceland is only 400,000 and 3/4th of them live in Reykjavik, so anything outside of the city is pretty remote. Ranga is one of the only options around so you will also be eating all of your meals there. It also looks eerily like a lodge-version of the hotel in 'The Shining.'
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| Red rum |
My one qualm with them is that even though we called to let them know we'd be arriving extremely early in the morning and confirming early check-in, they were unable to accommodate us when we arrived. We had to wait until the breakfast buffet was open to eat (and they almost wouldn't let us since we weren't officially guests yet) and then napped on couches in the upstairs lounge until our room was ready. Needless to say, we then spent most of the day napping. Leaving the hotel around 4pm, the sun was already starting to set. At this time of the year, the sun rises between 9-10am and sets starting at 4pm and both are the most beautiful evolution of colors ever seen. We began to refer to these times as "cotton candy skies."
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| Alone on the road |
We decided to make the hour drive to Fontana, an Icelandic spa with geothermal baths. We ate a lunch lunch of unlimited soup and bread. The rye bread tasted amazing and was actually cooked in the geothermal pools earlier in the day. Then we went out to the pools, which overlook a lake. There was one major mineral pool, a couple hot tubs that were more chlorine based, multiple steam rooms, and a sauna that you could alternate between.
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| Ahhhhh.... sulfite soaking |
After a couple hours of needed post-flight soaking and discovering what we didn't know yet would be the trend of foreigners wanting to talk about Trump in sauna, we headed back to Ranga. There we ate a massive late dinner, which was probably not needed but hey, it's vacation! As a head's up to anyone who's lactose intolerant* and traveling to Iceland, beware. Cream comes in everything, cream is the base for everything, cream stretches their use of vegetable longer, cream will be on your plate whether the description includes it or not. I had a seafood soup (based in cream), with bread and Icelandic butter (which the Island is know for and rightfully so), and a salmon entree with creamed kale. Dinner is pretty pricey at Ranga, but it's also a four star meal and the only thing around.
On day 2 we woke up and once again indulged in the Ranga breakfast buffet (nutella waffles!). After that, we hoped in our SUV and headed out to the Golden Circle, which is a popular drive where you can see a lot of Iceland's natural wonders.
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| Get ready for more gratuitous sky pics |
There are a ton of tour buses you can take from Reykjavik but we were so happy we drove it ourselves. We determined our own pace and rolled out when groups of tour buses rolled in. We hit the three main sights, but tacked on two more unknown stops at the end (which were actually our favorites). Starting out, we went to Gullfoss, a massive waterfall in a long canyon.
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| The only thing not frozen |
It was beautiful, but the wind was so strong we were freezing our faces off after viewing it from a variety of vantage points. After checking out the gift shop, we were ready to head to the next stop. 10-15 minutes from the waterfall is Strokkur Geyser, surrounded by a bunch of little geysers.
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| The main geyser, notice how close the tourists are |
The main guy goes off every 6-10 minutes, with other ones erupting every 3-4 minutes. And while it may be dangerous, they really let you get pretty close. I remember being at Yellowstone where they told horrific stories about getting scalded to death by geysers and roped tourists off a safe distance away. Here you can basically walk right up.
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| I also really enjoyed this little fatty explosion |
We were so close we could walk the geothermal pool boil like a cauldron and then all the sudden get sucked into the earth before erupting. It was pretty cool.
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| Ridiculously close to ridiculously hot water |
On the drive from there to Thingvellir National Park you could see geysers eruptions all over the horizon, appearing to be suspended in air like they froze there. The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where the tectonic plates are slowly continuing to move away, under a giant glacier lake so there's some cool lookout spots.
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| "Frozen" geysers in the distance if you look closely |
We though there'd be places to eat lunch but sadly there were only gas station-quality sandwiches at the Information Center. I made the risky choice of salmon and regretted it. After that we started driving down the southeast side of the lake to see Kerid Crater, near Selfoss. It's so neat because it's this perfectly circular lake at the bottom of a deep crater hole. You can walk around the top ridge and down to the bottom. There are lots of rock fragments and it makes you think about how hard this meteorite propelled down from space.
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| Space + Iceland = mindblowing |
It was our favorite natural wonder of the day on not on the major Golden Circle tours, so it was bus free with minimal crowds. For our last stop of the road trip, we went to Gamla Laugin, the "secret lagoon." It was our favorite because it felt so authentic. There wasn't a crowd, everyone is chill, and it's a natural lake. Part of it was even blocked off because it's gotten so hot that it has become and erupting geyser.
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| The not so secret, secret lagoon |
After a solid soak, we headed back for another expensive dinner at Hotel Ranga, filled with Icelandic butter and strange creamed vegetable foams. While eating dinner, they announced that the Northern Lights were up and peaking, so everyone ran out of the dining room, through on these amazing wool snowsuits they provide, and ran outside.
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| Magic suits, wish we could have worn these the whole trip! |
The Northern Lights are so beautifully unexplainable. It's like what I imagine the skies in Harry Potter to be like, when Voldermort appears. But way less eerie and nobody dies. We went to Ranga's open roof observatory, where they have space quality telescopes to look at the stars and the Northern Lights with. We talked to one of the guys they had stationed out there and it sounds like the green color comes from excited oxygen. Ionized nitrogen makes more of the blue and purple hues you see in other parts of the world. Don't ever say you didn't learn anything from Green Eggs & Glam!
On day three we work up early, stuffed giant to-go boxes with breakfast buffet items, and hit the road for a 3.5 hour drive out to the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, where we were meeting up with our ice cave trekking group. After a morning of driving through cotton candy skies, apocalyptic terrain, through cute sea towns like Vik, and past mountain ranges with massive glaciers we made it to this super cool lagoon/lake filled with massive icebergs of all the blue hues on the spectrum.
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| Blue hues |
All the tours pick up from the cafe parking lot there and we found out that ours had been cancelled due to car issues (the rough glacier terrain you have to drive across to get to the caves is hard even for ATVs). Luckily there were a ton of other companies waiting in the parking lot and we easily found another one. Our guide was great, although he didn't know the answer to one of our incessant questions, and defaults with "oh, it's the molecules." Nope, the ice is blue because the red (long wavelengths) part of white light is absorbed by ice and the blue (short wavelengths) light is transmitted and scattered. The longer the path light travels in ice, the more blue it appears. Another knowledge bomb! To get to the cave drove across what looked like rocky terrain on the surface of the moon but actually turned out to be a glacier, with the dirt and volcanic ash making the ice appear more like rocks.
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| What I imagine the surface of the moon looks like |
This area used to be populated back in the 1300s but then a volcano erupted, wiping out all the settlers. There were multiple tour groups once we got up there but it still wasn't too packed since we were there in off-season.
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| Walking into the cave |
Our guide told us the crowds have been growing, as last year Iceland saw ~300,000 tourists and by the end of 2016 the expect that number to be closer to 2MM. Once we were in the cave, you got to spend time walking around and could go pretty far in. There were so many natural shades of deep blue, it was unlike any place I'd ever been before.
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| This is really what it looks like #nofilter |
There's one area that was so small, Jess and I had to crawl up through a tunnel to get to an open air spot where you were surrounded by blue walls.
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| Like how is this real? #themolecules |
The ice caves were so amazing it reminded me that the earth is a pretty cool place. After that, we drove to the Fosshotel, which is a massive upscale hotel in the absolute middle of nowhere. Next to a waterfall.
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| We're all alone out here... |
Unfortunately I booked the room for 2017, but they had one of their apartment units available and it was only $100/night and so worth the upgrade. They had happy hour in the lobby, where we enjoyed artisinal San Francisco quality cocktails made by an Icelandic bartender who looked 14.
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| So legit they deserved a photo |
We then made our way to their ritzy dining room (these hotels in the middle of nowhere must be making a killing on food). Needless to say it started with more Icelandic butter and cheese, although my salmon with polenta and cauliflower was the best I'd had on the trip so far. At night, we could see the Northern Lights again out our window as we fell asleep.
On day four, we drove almost four hours back to Thingvellir National Park. We saw the most epic sunrise I've ever possibly seen in my life. Although I would be awake for more sunrises if they were all at 10am.
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| Again, no filter. Just cotton candy skies forever. |
Around the island there are also a ton of adorable ponies and lots of tourists pull over to take "pony selfies." I would recommend not getting too close, they might think you are trying to feed them...
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| The asshole pony that looks like Sia bit my finger |
Our lovely Garmin, who can't pronounce Icelandic words anyway, decided to take us on the 360 which ended up being a harrowing, snowy, one way along the edge of the lake so I highly recommend staying on the 36. The beautiful, large, fresh water lake is actually covering a unique natural phenomenon on the north side, the Silfa Fissue. This is where you can actually see the continental drift taking place, as a "river" has formed over where the American and Eurasian tectonic plates are moving away from each other. Every year they shift another 2cm apart.
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| This is what it looks like when the earth splits apart |
Due to the uniqueness of this area and the fact that the water is so clear, it has become one of the most popular dive spots in the world. The way it was explained to us (so don't fact check me on this) is that 20-30m clarity is considered good dive visibility and in the fissure it's 70m. Sadly I am not diving certified (still on the bucket list!) so we decided to snorkel, yes snorkel during winter in Iceland in a glacial lake. There are a bunch of companies that offer this and we went with Magmadive, who ended up being awesome. Everyone else was in big groups but with them it was just the two of us and our really nice guide Wiktor. There were some small panic attacks when the claustrophobic dry suits were put on, but we powered through it even through apparently my face was blue.
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| Please keep us warm enough to complete our synchronized snorkeling expedition! |
There was an initial shock getting into the water but the wool layer under the dry suit was the best. And you face and hands just go numb a couple minutes in. Once in the water, it really does feel like you're in a crevice of the earth, sandwiched between two rocky plates. The clarity was amazing and we could see down pretty far, past all these different shades of blue and green.
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| Literally sandwiched between tectonic plates |
All in, you're in the water for about 20 minutes and it was totally worth it. Afterwards Wiktor made us the best hot chocolate I've ever had. We jumped in our trusty RAV4 and headed to Reykjavik... stay tuned for Part II of Iceland adventures!
