The Ultimate Iceland Roadtrip

Last weekend, Ilona and I decided to go on a little tour along the south coast of Iceland. That turned out to be a lot longer than we thought. In a car that turned out to be falling apart. It was quite an adventure but we saw some amazing sights!


Waterfalls everywhere! 

Our first stop was Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall just off the ring road (the main road around the island). You can park right by it so it is very easy to reach. The 65m high waterfall itself was beautiful and in summer, you can walk behind it. Unfortunately there was still snow on the path so it was closed now. It was quite busy around the main waterfall so we decided to wander around a little. A sign lead us to Gljúfrabúi, another waterfall just 500m away from the main one. The name means 'dweller in the gorge' and sure enough the waterfall is partly obscured by the rock formation in front of it. You can wade through the little stream and into the gorge for a great up close view of the waterfall. Most people don´t go further than Seljalandsfoss but I thought Gljúfrabúi was even prettier. After getting soaked by the spray from both waterfalls we drove on to Skógafoss, 30km further east on the ring road. The 25m wide waterfall is pretty impressive but even better is the hike up. You have to climb a 527 step staircase to the viewing platform but from there you can walk further up along the water. We were told there are 22 more waterfalls, we didn´t walk that far but we saw another few as well as some beautiful scenery. This hike was the highlight of the trip for both of us! There are a few other waterfalls you can visit in this area, like Kvernifoss behind the Skógar Museum, but unfortunately we didn´t have enough time to go there.

A different kind of beach...
If you dream of white sand beaches, then Iceland is not for you. Here they have black beaches, but if you're lucky, they are scattered with diamonds. We went to the southernmost tip of Iceland, the lighthouse near Vik. This is a great look out point over the black beaches. It was quite windy when we were there so the waves were huge and you couldn't get to the beach itself. But there are other spots where you can walk on the beach, and we had a great view over the shore and the rock formations (which are supposedly petrified trolls..). If you drive further north on the ring road, you'll get to a big bridge where you'll find Diamond Beach on the right and the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon on the left.  The lagoon is famous for it's floating icebergs, which break of off Vatnajökull glacier. The chunks of ice fall into the lagoon and drift out to sea, where the waves crash them on the black sand beach. This beach is also known as 'Diamond Beach' as the ice chunks that wash ashore, glisten in the sun like diamonds. The 'diamonds' that break of Europe's biggest glacier are thousands of years old. You can take a guided tour of the glacier or visit one of the ice caves. Our tour was unfortunately cancelled due to bad weather but I would definitely recommend the ice cave tour if you visit in winter, I´ve heard it´s beautiful.

And some car trouble (because it wouldn´t be a proper roadtrip without it)
We spent the night in Höfn (about an hour east of the Glacier Lagoon) so we wouldn´t have to do the five hour drive back to Hella the same day. While the car was fine the first day, unfortunately it didn´t do so well the second day. A guy from the hostel had to tow us behind his nice rental car in order for us to get the car running. After we visited Svartifoss waterfall in Skaftafell, the car wouldn´t start anymore without one of us pushing it. We certainly got some weird looks at the gas station when we had to 'push start' it after filling up. Svartifoss was nice by the way, but I think it will look better in Spring/Summer when it´s green. We were a bit disappointed by it now, especially since it was a 45 minute hike up a pretty steep hill to get there (and they said the level of that hike was 'easy´, I don't want to know what their 'challenging' hike is like). Besides not starting, the car also didn't reverse anymore. This caused a bit of a problem when we visited Fjadrárgljúfur, a beautiful green canyon on a dirt road about 15 minutes off the ring road. Thankfully I managed to pull the car around in the tiny parking lot. After barely making it up the pretty steep hill on the way back from the canyon, we did make it home safely (miracles do exist!). It was a great roadtrip though, for me it felt more like the Iceland that you see in photos than the Golden Circle and it's certainly a must do when in Iceland.



Ps. all the hiking and pushing cars along the south coast made for good Mongol Derby training ;)