Iceland is the epitome of natural beauty. Seated on the Mid-Atlantic rift just south of the Arctic Circle, the remote, volcanic island hosts many of Earth’s most epic landscapes and natural phenomenons. Despite it’s small size (a single lap around the country’s coastal “Ring Road” can take as little as seventeen hours) you could easily spend months exploring the intricacies of the unique, almost alien geographical terrain. And whether you prefer the hospitality of a luxury resort or the freedom of sleeping in a tent, Iceland provides nearly endless opportunities for any and all who seek out its distant shores.

In September of 2017 three friends and I spent ten days exploring the country on an awesome, car-camping, road trip. The following travel guide not only tells the story of our journey, it also provides a detailed itinerary for those who wish to create a similar adventure for themselves.

Iceland Travel Guide

Reykjavík

After we got bored with the tourist attraction we got some coffee and spent the afternoon stocking up on provisions for our upcoming car camping road trip.

Travel Tip:

Check out Bónus for cheap(er) groceries.

Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon is a spa built on top of a natural hot spring. Conveniently located between the airport and downtown Reykjavik, the spa can get pretty crowded.

Travel Tip: If you plan to go to the Blue Lagoon, book your entry online ahead of time. The lines are worse than Disney Land in there.

Anyone traveling to or from Europe with more than a two hour layover in Iceland goes to the Blue Lagoon. It was packed.

After we got our scantron bracelets we put our stuff in the locker room and went out to the hot spring. There are all these bridges you can swim under to get to different sections of the pool. Some areas have booths where they give you mineral mud to rub all over your face. There are a couple bars in the pool where you can charge drinks to your bracelet.

After showering we bought some skin products in the gift shop, returned the bracelets and settled our drink tab before heading back to our AirBnb to get some sleep before starting our road trip the next day.

The next morning we packed up the car and hopped on the road towards the Golden Circle.

On our way out of town we had to stop by this camping outfitter store to buy fuel for our camp stoves because unfortunately you cannot take pressurized, flammable gas canisters on an airplane.

Don’t ask me how much a can of fuel costs, it was way more than we wanted to pay, but we needed it so we coughed up the Kronas then got some coffee and yummy pastries on our way out of town to take our minds off it.

The Golden Circle

The Golden Circle refers to the route around several natural tourist attractions within driving distance of Reykjavik.

Thingvellir also happens to be the filming location of several scenes in Game of Thrones where Arya and The Hound wander around before they bump into Brienne and Pod.

Strokkur Geyser

Our next stop along the Golden Circle route was the Icelandic version of old-faithful. On the walk to the geyser from the parking lot you cross a steaming hot stream and several other bubbling pits of doom before you reach the swarms of tourists you have to mine through before you get to the stanchion rope surrounding the geyser pool.

The geyser erupts every five to ten minutes.

Gullfoss

Our next stop was Gullfoss, a huuuuuge waterfall.

Travel Tip:

“Foss” means waterfall in Icelandic.

Faxi

From there we drove to another waterfall called “Faxi.”

Kerid Crater

After Faxi we drove to the Kerid crater where we caught the sunset and I got a couple dope shots for instagram.

And that’s the Golden Cirlce, folks…

The plan for the rest of the trip was to follow Route 1 aka The Ring Road all the way around the coastline until we got back to Reykjavik. Iceland is not that big of a place. Apparently the entire route can be driven in seventeen hours if you can resist the constant temptation to stop and take in the scenery. You’d think that ten days would be enough to complete a seventeen hour drive, but after pulling over to take pictures so many times just wthin the first few days we realized that ten days was not even close to the amount of time it takes to see the whole country and we knew that we would soon have to start deciding what we were going to have to skip.

The ring road is pretty well paved in most places, and well graveled in others. Our little hatchback did well though it may have been a different story if there had been snow on the ground. In spite of all that there are still a great many perils on the road of the ring (Gandalf voice).

For example, there are a lot of rivers the ring road crosses and the bridges are just an accident waiting to happen. Almost all of the bridges are only wide enough for one car to cross at a time so more often than not you have to stop for someone coming off the bridge in the other direction.

After the Kerid crater we had a bit of a drive to our campsite so we stopped for gas by Selfoss, a little town on a massive river that had one of these very bridges.

As we were pumping gas we noticed police car lights one the other side of the river and then we noticed that there were people on our side of the river watching.

We walked over to see what was going on and, I shit you not, we watched uniformed EMTs sprinting down the opposite bank attempting to throw a rope to a guy who was getting swept downstream in ice cold water.

We saw a helicopter fly over several times as well as a recon team of scuba divers on an inflatable raft.

They both made several passes but we never saw them pull anybody out.

Needless to say, after that nobody had to remind us to drive safe.

After about an hour of sitting in traffic behind the police barricade, we decided to backtrack and take the long way around the bridge (Route 38→ Route 34→ Selfoss), before driving the last few miles to the campsite where we spent the night.

We made it to our campsite much later than we had initially planned.

Little did we know that this would become a pretty consistent theme throughout the trip. That night making camp was all we could do before falling asleep.

Travel Tip:

Download offline maps on Google Maps before you leave for your trip. This way you can avoid using data to navigate around unpredictable situations like the one we encountered at the bridge in Selfoss.

On the morning after our first night of camping, I woke up to the sound of sheep no more than twenty feet away from our tent. Half the group was still asleep so a couple of us walked over to check out a nearby waterfall.

Once the other guys woke up we made some nice oatmeal and sweet potato hash for breakfast before packing up the car and walking over to the main waterfall we had driven passed the previous night.

Seljalandsfoss

This is one of the prettier waterfalls in Iceland. The water comes down in these smooth sheets that make for nice photos.

There’s a walking path that circles around the back of the falls. If you decide to go back there just make sure to wear a rain shell because you’re pretty much guaranteed to get soaked.

There are floodlights that light up the falls at night.

After checking out the waterfall we hopped back in the car and continued around the ring road.

Skogafoss

Our next stop was the mighty Skogafoss.

Keeping within the theme of super crowded landmarks, Skogafoss was packed with tourists. We snapped a few photos before heading up the staircase that leads to the top of the waterfall. There are a few trails up there you can wander around if you want to get away from the crowds. If you’re into landscape photography, or just wanna check out a dope view there are a lot of great vantage points from the top of the falls, and on a clear day you can see all the way to the ocean.

After a little while we headed back down to the car and continued on the crash site of this US air force plane on the famous black sand beach. But on the drive over we got our first glimpse of a glacier.

Black Sand Beach

It was pouring rain by the time we got to the parking lot so I put my iPhone in a ziplock sandwich baggy left my big camera in the car. It’s about a half-hour walk from the parking lot to the plane so we got properly drenched on the way over. But the plane and the beach were both dope AF so it was totally worth it. And on the bright side, the rain made us appreciate that we had rented a car with butt warmers.

Dyrhólaey Lighthouse

After the plane we drove up this super sketchy cliffside road to check out this lighthouse that overlooks the black sand beach and a few other famous geological formations that appear in Game of Thrones Season 2 and Batman Begins.

Hálsanefshellir Cave

After the lighthouse we drove down to the pebble beach that had this crazy looking cave and these epic basalt formations by the black beach restaurant.

Vik

From there we drove to Vik, a popular town in the South of Iceland. They have this huge store for this Icelandic wool brand called Icewear that makes lots of blankets and outdoor clothing but we didn't buy anything because it was expensive and we already had everything we needed.

At this point we were pretty hungry so we went to this amazing (CoughEXPENSIVE) restaurant on the top of a hill where we had some delicious fish and beer, before stocking up on our favorite Icelandic snacks, at the local grocery store.

After that we hit the road to our next campsite by the Vatnajokull National Park, which is home to the largest glacier in Europe. That night we saw a very faint display of the northern lights and because I had no idea how to use my new camera at the time, this was the best photo I got.

So what can you take away from this part of the trip?

First, I’d say that if you don’t want to spend time photoshopping people out of your photos, you definitely need to get to these locations super early in the morning. Even that is no guarantee.

Second, if you go to Skogafoss, definitely make the climb up the staircase. It's like a whole other world up there.

Third, definitely wear a raincoat if you walk around the back of Seljalandsfoss, everyone who came out of there was completely soaked. If you are going to Iceland you should definitely invest in a good one anyway.

Check out the the list of gear we brought on our trip where you can find a couple recommendations.

And last, these locations have been used to film tons of Hollywood movies. Here is a link to an article with a list of those locations if you are into that.

We woke up pretty pumped on the morning of September 8th. The glacier tour we had booked for that morning was one of the main reasons we chose to travel to Iceland in the first place. We had arrived after dark the night before so when the sun finally came up we got all excited because we could see part of the glacier edging over the top of a nearby mountain. We might have experienced some residual excitement from seeing the northern lights the night before, but yeah, ‘twas gonna be a good day!

Glacier Tour

Once we broke down camp and packed up the car, we drove about a hundred yards, parked, signed in with the guides and filled out the various “we’re not liable if you die” forms. After that they gave us each an ice ax and a pair of crampons before we got on the bus that drove us to the spot where we could easily access the glacier.

We signed up for the half-day glacier tour, which costs around $100US per person.

Our guide was very knowledgeable. On the short walk between the bus and the glacier he explained all about how glaciers form and how they move over time, carving up the landscape. He also explained how glaciers are a good way to study the impact of climate change by showing us how far the glacier has receded in recent years. Very interesting stuff!

Once we got onto the actual ice, we put on our crampons and he showed us how to safely walk with the ice axes.

We had to follow him in a single file line as he tested the ice with his much larger ice pick. Once we got up on the glacier we had this great view of the meltwater pond we passed on the way from the bus.

Iceland is covered in tons of different species of moss. There is even a species of moss that grows on the glacier.

I knew nothing of filters, f-stops and shutter speeds at the time so naturally I took a million photos using all of the automatic modes available on my camera. This should clear up any mystery surrounding the reason why I was unable to get any photos of northern lights the night before. But yeah, everything up there just looked so cool! There are all these pristine, meltwater pools that kind of make the ice look transparent, like trippy portals to another dimension.

After that we headed back down to the bus and got lunch in this cafe/buffet/chalet place.

Travel Tip:

This area is a great spot to plan a day around. The campsite, cafe, glacier guide company and trail heads are all within walking distance of one another.

Magnusarfoss and Svartifoss

After lunch we walked up this path that led to two popular waterfalls, Magnusarfoss and Svartifoss. Neither of the falls really compared to the those we had seen the previous day, but the overall beauty of the area was undeniable.

There are some benches a little ways up the path where you can sit and take in the view. DBro was tired so he decided to chill there while the rest of us went to see where the path led.

The path went a lot further than we expected and since we had all the phones with local SIM cards we couldn’t call DBro to tell him how long we would be. In all honesty, we didn’t even know how long we would be. All we knew is that the path kept going and we were curious what was at the end.

Up ahead we could see the same part of the glacier we saw that morning creeping up over the mountain. As we continued onward, more and more of the mountain underneath started coming into view.

Eventually we got to this massive cliff that overlooked a huge tendril of the glacier that had slithered between the mountain and the cliff we were standing on, leading right into this awesome looking meltwater lagoon that was dotted with all these floating icebergs. It was one of the more epic views I’ve seen in my entire life.

There were a handful of people chilling on the cliffside so we took some iPhone panoramas before heading back down. There were two other iceberg lagoons we had planned to check out that day and we wanted to drive there before it got dark.

Iceberg Lagoons

By the time we finished checking out the Icebergs it was already late afternoon and we were still pretty close to where we had camped the night before.

Why is that important? One might ask. Well I’ll tell you.

It all stars several months earlier when we were back home planning the trip.

After we booked our flights we also paid for/reserved several other things like our rental car, the glacier tour, the passes for the Blue Lagoon and the AirBNB we stayed at in Reykjavik for the first two nights. In addition to all that we booked another AirBNB so that we could do laundry, charge batteries and take showers about half way through the trip. The hard part was trying to figure out where we would be at the half way point.

Long story short, we were in the Southeast by the icebergs, and if we didn’t want to miss our reservation we had two days to get to our “half-way-house,” which was all the way in the north. The problem was that there were a lot of things we wanted to see in between where we were and where we were going.

So we had a decision to make. We could either drive through most of the night and skip the Eastfjords, a famously beautiful region, and find a campsite near one of the places we had planned to visit after that. Or we could go back to where we had camped the night before, have a relaxing evening and just try to rush through everything for the next couple days.

In the end we decided to push forward and skip the Eastfjords. We knew going into the trip that we wouldn’t have time to see everything and we weren’t about to sacrifice several hours of driving progress just so we could relax.

That was one of the sketchiest drives I have ever done. After it got dark the road turned to gravel and we basically drove into a cloud. It was a long drive too. It’s not like you can just hop on the expressway and skip the Eastfjords exit. We had to drive in and out and in and out, up and down, back and forth. It took forever.

It was super late by the time we finally made it to the campsite. We had been going non-stop since we flew out of Boston five days earlier. We all fell asleep pretty quickly that night hoping that we wouldn’t burn out before the end of the trip.

We got a really late start the next day. It was the first day that we weren't up and out at the crack o’ dawn. We had camped on some nice fluffy grass and slept well into the morning. To be honest we really needed the rest. We had been going non stop for the past five days and needed to slow down and recover a bit. After a lazy breakfast we befriended a local duck and explored the area around this lake we had camped at.

This was the first campsite we stayed at where we were explicitly told to filter the tap water. Most of the water sources we had previously encountered were glacial runoff, which is generally safe to drink without a filter but unlike the others, this campsite drew its tap water from the lake. A minor detail, but an important one to mention.

This was really the only forested area we visited in Iceland. The conditions in most other places are too harsh for trees to grow very tall. There is a strict no-campfire policy in Iceland to protect the fragile ecosystem.

It was a pretty relaxing morning. After breaking down camp and packing up the car we wandered around a nature path near the campsite before deciding to go check out a short hike nearby.

Travel Tip:

The trail we took begins at a parking lot that is not labeled on Google Maps. The access road is across the street from the Orkan station and the parking lot is next to the building with the red roof. I pinned the location but I was only able to find it using satellite mode so it is probably worth turning that on if you have trouble finding the parking lot.

It was a really nice day. This was the first time we saw the sun come out since the day we left Reykjavik. That combined with the fact that we were further inland, protected from the costal sea breeze, made for the warmest weather we experienced the entire trip.

All the batteries for my DSLR camera were out of juice after taking so many pictures of the glacier and icebergs the day before.

In addition to the GoPro I also packed my 10 year old point n’ shoot camera that I had brought as a backup. Despite its age it still takes pretty decent photos.

We knew there was a lookout point somewhere along these horse trails so we brought up a camp stove and made tea on the cliff.

On the way down MichaBub and I got a bit ahead of the other guys and ended up taking a wrong turn or missing a turn at some point. Instead of backtracking and potentially getting lost again we decided to just head downhill knowing that we would eventually hit the road. After some bushwhacking we finally found it but quickly realized that we were about a mile down the road from where we had parked.

At this point in the day it was legitimately hot outside.

We wuz sweatin’ like a snow cone on the fourth o’ joo-lie.

We walked down the road for a while until we could see the parking lot on the other side of these horse paddocks. We didn’t want to walk all the way around so we took another “shortcut” through the woods until we finally made it back to the car.

Irregardless of the fact that we were the ones who took a wrong turn, somehow we still beat the other guys back to the car. They had the keys so we just chilled on the grass basking in the glorious sunlight until they showed up.

Litlanesfoss - Hike in the Wind

After the other guys got back to the car we drove to the other side of the lake to check out a waterfall hike.

The parking lot where the trail starts is right next to a bridge where Route 933 crosses the runoff from the waterfall.

Despite the fact that we could still see the nice cozy forest where we had spent the morning, this side of the lake was like a different planet.

Less than an hour before I was sweating bullets, wishing I had more layers to take off but now, despite wearing all my layers, hiking was all I could do to stay warm.

Aesthetically, this was one of the nicer hikes we did the whole trip and the weather became more tolerable once we got the blood pumping. Unlike the mild grade we experienced that morning on our leisurely stroll through the woods, the incline here was so steep that they had to put in a staircase.

The trail runs parallel to the runoff from the waterfall. After the stairs there’s a long stretch of the trail that remains exposed to the wind until it dips down into the ravine alongside the stream.

There are two tiers to this waterfall. After you pass the lower one it’s a pretty straight shot to the top.

Iceland does this weird thing where all of the sudden in the middle of the day you randomly get this crazy sunrise/sunset light coming through the clouds that just lights up the landscape in this crazy surreal way.

I am no photographer by any stretch of the imagination. I had owned my first DSLR for a little over two months at the time of this trip and, as I have mentioned before, I was still a slave to the automatic shooting modes.

Automatic mode evokes a lot of trash talk from the photography an cinematography community. I have learned a lot about photography since I was in Iceland and I no longer rely on my camera to choose the settings for me but I think it was an important phase in the learning process that people shouldn’t criticize as much as they do. After all, everyone is a beginner at some point.

It’s hard enough for most beginners to motivate themselves to actually get out and take photos. If beginners feel intimidated by Manual Mode, they should be encouraged to switch the camera to Auto. That way when they have a minute to learn about things like composition, exposure settings and photo editing they can then look back at the photos that they shot on Auto and start to understand the limitations.

Having learned a lot about how to use Adobe programs like Lightroom and Photoshop, since returning from this trip, I can look back at the photos I took and see those issues right away, but a lot of what got me to this point was spending hours and hours trying to cover up issues that could have been fixed in-camera. Even though a lot of my Iceland photos have flaws by my current standards, at that time they were some of the best images I had ever taken.

I brought this up because at this stage of the trip all three of my DSLR batteries had died and I could only use my phone, my GoPro and my old point-n-shoot camera. And what could be worse to a perfectionist who criticizes beginners who use AUTO on their DSLRs? AUTO mode on a ten-year-old point-n-shoot. Yet somehow I was able to get photos on this hike that look a heluvuh lot nicer than a lot of the pics that came out of using manual mode on my DSLR several months later.

Now, I repeat, by no stretch of the imagination do I consider myself a photography expert, but I realized something that I think a lot of aspiring photographers and videographers struggle to internalize. When you have minimal experience and only own entry level gear, it’s easy to assume that your photos or videos will look bad until you can afford the expensive pro gear, but the truth is that the subject of what you are capturing with your camera or even your phone is so much more important than the camera itself. If you own the best camera that money can buy, you simply cannot take beautiful landscape photos if you are not looking at a beautiful landscape. The same way you cannot produce a compelling video if you are not telling a good story. So whatever it is that you feel is preventing you from progressing, just try to forget about it and get out there with whatever you do have. Whether it is the camera you got for free when you bought a phone, the old camera your grandpa bought you ten years ago for your high school graduation, or your old GoPro that doesn’t even have a screen, if you try your best to capture the things that are beautiful to you your stories and images will be 1000x more compelling than those made by someone who is too afraid to bring their camera outside because of how much money they spent on it.

Phew, long rant. My b. Now back to the Iceland trip…

After some rain, sun and a ton of wind on the way back down, we made it back down to the car and went buy snacks and fill up on gas near where the Ring Road crosses the lake.

We kept driving, pulling over to take pictures every once in a while, but it got pretty foggy as the sun went down and by the time we got to our campsite the weather had gotten significantly worse.

Camping in the Rain

This was the first night we had to set up the tents in the rain, which wasn’t too bad. The issue came when we wanted to make dinner. We were tired, cold and wet. Typically we had divided up the camp chores. Two of us would set up the tents while the other two worked on dinner. But windy, rainy conditions can often be worse than snow. Aside from the wind slowing down the stoves, managing the small camping stoves with freezing fingers and empty bellies was enough to test the resilience of the group dynamic. After we finally got around to eating, we sat in the car with the butt warmers on full blast and re-bonded over a couple of the local Einstock beers. Once our buns were nice and toasty we crawled into our sleeping bags looking forward to spending the next night indoors.

Camping tip:

If you are camping in really cold weather, don’t assume that you will warm up just by taking refuge in your sleeping bag. Believe me, that will take a very long time if your body is already struggling to stay warm. It’s a much better idea to warm yourself up before getting into your sleeping bag, which usually requires you to get your blood pumping by running around or doing some jumping jacks. We used the car because we didn’t want to torture ourselves needlessly, but that typically isn’t always when camping. If you really can’t stand the cold any longer and absolutely have to hunker down, you can speed up the warming process by doing sit-ups inside your sleeping bag.

Reader Takeaways

First, I want to talk about the importance of rest and taking breaks. I have a friend I met in my freshman year of college who plans these four day trips all over the world. On these trips he takes in as much as he can in one fell swoop with minimal breaks or sleep. He is a super efficient, high energy guy and his trips look amazing because he packs so much into such a short period of time. But those types of trips have a time threshold beyond which that level of activity cannot be sustained. On a longer trip you have to pace yourself.

My dad regularly travels for work. I used to ask him how he was able to get quality work done while managing the jet-lag, lack of sleep etc. His solution was simple. No matter what time of day, no matter what timezone or schedule he was trying to acclimate to or from, the solution is always the same.

“If you’re tired, sleep.”

If you don’t sleep when you get tired, you’ll eventually get to a point where you can’t stay awake anymore and when you finally fall asleep, that rest won’t be enough to recharge you back to the same level of productivity you were hoping to maintain by staying awake and working harder when you were fighting the urge to sleep in the first place.

This definitely applies to any long term travel for business but I think it applies even more to recreational travel. Maintaining a positive attitude can be the difference between appreciating a beautiful view and not having fun at all.

Remember, recreational travel is all about the fun. Keeping your spirits up, especially on an active trip that’s longer than a week, is largely going to depend on your ability to manage your rest.

None of this applies to your spring break in Cabo where you’re laying on a beach, sipping margaritas or whatever. That counts as rest. I’m talking about active trips where you are constantly having to balance your calorie intake against what you are losing to hiking, climbing, biking, skiing, cold weather or whatever.

This Iceland trip was easily the most exhausting trip I have ever taken, other than maybe the back country ski course I took in January of 2012. So when you feel exhausted while traveling, whenever and wherever you get a chance to rest, whether it's at night in a bed or five minutes in the car between hikes, take advantage of those opportunities to take a breath, have some water, have a snack and close your eyes. I promise it will make a huge difference.

Second takeaway. Manage your gear budget responsibly.

When preparing for a trip like this, your hiking and camping gear should be your primary investment. If you can’t afford to spend a couple hundred bucks on good waterproofs, a sleep system and a tent because you spent three grand on a pro-level camera and another two grand on a lens, it won’t matter how amazing of a photo you take if you die of hypothermia before you have a chance to upload it. A low-res photo that you take on your phone in a beautiful place is so much more valuable than the emptiness of the SD card belonging to the person that was too cold to leave the car because they didn’t bring the proper gear.

For more information on the gear we brought on this trip, check out finerbub.com/iceland-gear.

The next morning was cold. Like, REAL COLD! Arriving at the campsite after dark didn’t give us much of a chance to look around. When we woke up that morning we were hoping to see what kinds of landscapes this part of the country had to offer but all we saw was this vast expanse of gravel and fog.

I’m pretty sure we just at bars for breakfast that morning because all I remember is wanting to pack up the tent as fast as possible so I could sit on the butt warmer in the car.

From the campsite we drove to Dettifoss.

Dettifoss

Dettifoss is another famous waterfall that has been in at least a couple movies.

You know that opening scene in Prometheus where the alien sacrifices himself to begin life on Earth? The waterfall he falls into is Dettifoss. I think it is also the waterfall where they filmed the Viking style funeral scene in Thor 2.

To get there we drove on this gravel road with an endless expanse of black rocks and fog in very direction.

This was one of the more shpritzy waterfalls we visited in Iceland. We thought it was raining when we got there but as it turns out, the waterfall just sprays that much water into the air.

Both the campsite and the waterfall were on Route 864, a little ways off the ring road, so we had to turn around and drive back to Route 1 before continuing onward.

Fumaroles & Lava Fields

The next few things we saw were all around the same area.

After we checked out these smoking rock piles we went up the road to see some lava fields.

We got absolutely drenched in the rain but the seeing the lava formations and stinky bubbling pits of doom made it all worthwhile.

Krafla Power Plant

We were cold and wet by the time we got back to the car so we warmed up inside a visitor center at this geothermal power plant where we drank some free coffee while watching educational videos in multiple languages we didn’t understand. When the English finally came around, we learned all about Iceland's history of volcanic activity and how they turned something really scary, like an erupting volcano, into renewable energy for their electrical grid.

We learned that 100% of Iceland’s electricity is made from renewable energy resources. 70% comes from geothermal power plants like the one we were at and 30% comes from hydro dams.

Godafoss

Then we hopped back on our glorious butt warmers and rode them to epic-waterfall-number-two of the day. This one was also pretty shpritzy but not quite as intense as the last one.

After that we drove our but warming mobile all the way to our much needed AirBNB.

It wasn’t until I got home and started watching YouTube tutorials that I really understood how much of a mecca Iceland has become for landscape photographers.

When I got home I was so pumped because I felt like I had taken the best photos of my life and I would have so much new material that I could use to redesign my website.

I’d search for something landscape photography related, then a few seconds into a tutorial I’d think, “hold on this looks familiar. Holy shit. I was just there and I took that same photo! Wait a second… Why does mine look like absolute shit next to theirs.”

So yeah, if you are into photography, you will love Iceland.

On the trip, I often felt annoyed every time I’d see a phalanx of tripods lined up at the edge of a cliff preventing everyone else from taking pictures that didn’t have big, stupid heads in the way. In retrospect I felt bad that I got annoyed by all that. Over time I came to appreciate the effort and patience that goes into waiting for the light to hit the scene in a way that makes the difference between the photos I took and the photos I saw in those photography tutorials.

As the great Thomas Heaton once said, “a great view doesn't always make a great photograph.”

The initial feeling I experienced after watching those tutorials was one of regret. I was upset with myself for not having taken the time to learn these things before I went on such an epic trip. However, in truth, if it weren't for this Iceland trip I would have never been as inspired to learn these things in the first place. I guess I’ll just have to go back… And as I have mentioned many times before, the tutorials I watched after I got back sent me on a crazy adventure into the depths of YouTube photography and cinematography tutorials, which led to the discovery of most of the channels that I regularly watch now, for both education and entertainment.

AirBnb

If you plan to go to Iceland and you book your trip far enough in advance, this Airbnb is a dope place to stay. The whole area is just this massive expanse of farm land that gradually slopes all the way down to the water. We were there in September, but I bet it’s a fun sledding hill in the winter. The fjord is like a magnet for epic cloud formations and after finally recharging my camera batteries at the airbnb I was able to snap some sweet pics.

This was also the first night in a while that we got to take showers and sleep in beds, so that combined with our fresh, dry laundry put us all in a good mood.

Akyureyri

After packing up the car we headed across the fjord to the small town of Akureyri. This place was way more chill than both Reykjavik and regular Vik. It is also a lot less touristy since it is located just beyond the reach of the Reykjavik day trippers.

We got some breakfast and coffee at a bakery and walked around for a bit before hopping back on the road.

This was really the first major driving day we had the whole trip.

Our goal was to drive all the way from Akureyri to the base of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula with a stop off in the Westfjords.

The scenery along the way was beautiful as usual.

We stopped a few times here and there to snap some photos, buy snacks, and fill up the gas tank but not for too long. As I said, the goal was to see as much of the Westfjords as we could by the end of the day. A foolish expectation in retrospect but this is how we learn…

Westfjords

The Westfjords are supposed to host some of the more beautiful scenes in all of Iceland and apparently you can spend an entire vacation exploring that area alone. Our issue was that we were once again on a time crunch. Yair had to catch his plane a day earlier than the rest of us and we wanted to explore the Snaefellsnes peninsula AKA “Mini Iceland” on his last day. So this one afternoon was all the time we could spare to see the Westfjords. How much will we get to see? Well, it depends how long it takes us to get there...

It took all day. We arrived at the Westfjords in the middle of the afternoon and explored the area around this seaweed beach.

We tried hiking up to the top of a hill but it was super muddy and there was no trail so we gave up on that pretty quickly. In the end we only made it about an hour into the region before turning around.

It was a little disappointing that we missed some of the country’s most beautiful scenery but by this point in the trip I had already resolved to return to Iceland at some point and in my mind that was solidified by the thought that the Westfjords could be the focal point of the next trip. Maybe next time I’ll go in the Summer. Even though it’s the heavy tourist season, it would be cool to see the midnight sun.

We initially planned to camp here…

but on the drive over we found another Airbnb that was priced pretty low compared to what we had previously seen online. Maybe they dropped the price because they had a last minute cancellation or something like that.

So we wound up staying here instead:

This place was not quite as luxurious as the one we stayed at the previous night but the scenery was just as majestic. The house was on this beautiful ranch that was right on the water. We spent the evening walking around the grounds and snapping hundreds of photos…as is tradition.

Snaefellsnes Peninsula

The next morning we woke up super stoked for our road trip around “Mini Iceland.” As we pulled out of the driveway, we got held up by some of the locals that Micah and Yair were compelled to take selfies with.

Let me begin this section by saying that Snaefellsnes is fucking dope! If you only have one full day to spend in Iceland, this is what you should do. It is close enough to drive from Reykjavik, if that’s where you plan to stay, and there is just so much cool stuff to see. There are mountains, caves, glaciers, rock formations, moss and foss.

First, we drove to this quaint little town in the north of the peninsula. There’s another funky lookin’ church up there and a cute little red lighthouse that you can see from the church’s parking lot.

After that we went to a bakery for breakfast.

This bakery was across the street from a school. While we were eating we saw a kid run up to the fence, toss his backpack over, and escape. It was hilarious to watch, unfortunately I had not yet perfected the art of operating a camera and a fork at the same time.

Kirkjufell

After breakfast we headed to Kirkjufell. In case you were wondering about the banner photo at the top of this page, that’s what that is.

Kirkjufell is known as the most photographed mountain in Iceland. It’s got this strange, swirly, cone shape and a nice foss nearby to complete the scene. The mountain is featured in a bunch of scenes in Game of Thrones in addition to the first photography tutorial I watched when I got home.

After I spent around half an hour running around, snapping photos like a madman, we got back in the car and continued onward.

Snaefellsjokul National Park

Next we went to a pebble beach in Snaefellsjokul National Park.

The park was established around a glacier sitting on top of a volcano so the whole area had these crazy looking rock formations. A lot of it is covered in moss. There is also a rock formation that looks like a face, kinda like the New Hampshire Old man in the Mountain RIP.

Then we went down the road to go see this cave. They offer guided tours but we arrived at an inconvenient time. We didn’t really want to wait around for the beginning of the next tour so we justified not doing it by telling ourselves we were making up for the extra money we had spent on the unplanned Airbnb the night before.

Then we got lunch at a cafe before doing a coastal nature walk between two towns.

The nature walk was great. It stars by this funky looking house with a blue roof, wiggles between all these moss covered volcanic rocks along the coastline where you can see a bunch of rock formations in the water.

Along the way, there is also a cool stone sculpture of this guy from the Icelandic Sagas.

Once we got to the other town we headed back to the car and drove to our last hike of the day.

The views here were epic. After parking by the road, we hiked up this ridge-line that runs parallel to a stream all the way to the cliffs. Once you get to the top you can walk inside this huge gorge that the stream comes out of.

After that we drove to the campsite we had planned to stay at the previous night. It’s about a forty-five minute walk from the campsite to the Eldborg Crater but we were too tired so we just chilled and ate dinner.

Aurora Borealis - AKA

the Northern Lights

To celebrate Yair’s last night in Iceland the Gods of Norse mythology put on an absolutely epic light show in the sky.

This time we were prepared.

Yair was able to get in touch with his brother who used to do photography for when he was in the army. His advice combined with a little help from YouTube, brought to us by the free WiFi in the campground’s main lodge, we were able to get some epic photos of the northern lights.

I know they were out of focus and the compositions are not great but this was my first semi-successful attempt at nighttime photography and really the first time I had tried using manual mode on any camera. Considering all that, I think they came out pretty good.

Even though I had help, thanks Yair, having to figure out the settings on my camera to get the right exposure for the northern lights was a pivotal point in my development as a person who owns a camera.

It was also the first time I used my tripod the entire trip. You kind of need one for long exposure shots otherwise they look like this.

I was up really late that night. I stayed out long after the other guys went to bed. That was the first night where it really felt like winter was coming, which was fitting because we had seen the mountain that was in Game of Thrones, but yeah, after hours of fiddling with my camera and moving my metal tripod around, I could barely feel my fingers by the time I finally went to bed.

The clear skies that permitted us to see the northern lights carried over to the next morning so we woke up to a bright, sunny, but freezing, windy morning. Not wanting to mess around in the cold, we packed up the car and got outta there as fast as we could.

That was one of the better campsites we stayed at. They had picnic benches outside, decent bathrooms and an indoor kitchen with wifi with a bunch of tables to sit at. We camped because it was cheap, but there was also a bunk house where you could rent a bed, in addition to a couple cabins.

We had to head straight to the bus station after leaving the campsite so Yair could catch a bus to the airport.

After he left, the three of us ate breakfast at a nearby visitor center before beginning our last full day in the country.

Glymur

From there, we drove to Glymur, another activity that is pretty close to Reykjavik. The mountain is further inland than the campground so it was a lot warmer because it’s a bit more protected from the wind. Perfect weather for a hike. It was a great hike too.

The trail takes you through through some caves, over a river and up the mountain alongside a huge ravine that leads to… you guessed it, a waterfall.

Once we got a solid view of the foss, we chilled on the cliff for a bit before deciding to head back down. You can keep going all the way around to the other side of the waterfall but it was already past lunch time and we were planning to do another hike that afternoon.

I didn't get the best photos of the foss as you can see by this example of this magnificent shadow I managed to capture, but it was the best I could do at that moment on that day. Maybe if it had been a bit more overcast I could have achieved something more noteworthy but to be honest I was happy to hike in sunshine for a change.

After backtracking to the car we headed to a thermal river where we planned to catch the sunset.

Reykjadalur - THermal

Hot Spring River

Glymur was definitely a great hike. It had this epic, ever-changing, 360° view all the way up, but for some reason, maybe it was the sunset, I thought that this thermal river hike was way more beautiful. If like me you are obsessed with the Lord of the Rings you will definitely appreciate this hike. The landscape looked like some kind of crazy, hybrid lovechild of Mordor and the Shire, if you can imagine. There are all of these gorgeous grassy, green hills interspersed with smoking, volcanic pits of doom.

All of the dangerous areas are roped off and clearly marked so you don’t accidentally get boiled alive. Thankfully the hot spring area was nothing like the commercial shit show at the Blue Lagoon, but it wasn’t “all natural” either. There were some newly built wooden decks with steps leading down to the water, in addition to some benches and a few of these privacy walls behind which you can change in and out of your swim suit. Not that anyone used them, half the people there were naked… but my point is that even though there were signs of human infrastructure, the aesthetic was such that it blended in nicely with the surrounding natural environment.

Naturally we forgot our swimsuits in the car anyway so once we got to the swimming area at the top, we stripped down to our undies and just sat in the water for like an hour until it started getting dark.

It was pretty dark by the time we got back down to the car and started driving and we still had not found a place to camp for the night. Eventually we found a place thanks to whatever was left of the data on our communal SIM cards, but for some reason it was really hard to find. After driving around a residential neighborhood for a while we finally found the lodge, paid the caretaker and set up camp by some trees so we could stay out of the wind.

We finished the last of our Einstock beers and as we ate our last dinner in Iceland, we reflected back on the great times we had had over the course of our epic, ten-day adventure.

The next morning we packed up the car and on the way out we donated all our remaining food and stove fuel to the community box in the lodge.

On the way to the airport we felt that we owed it to ourselves to go to one more bakery to celebrate our last Icelandic breakfast.

After that we returned the rental car and flew home.

Reader Takeaways

• We did more of a fast-paced, outdoorsy, natural wonders tour but if you have the time and the budget and you don’t want to rough it, Iceland has plenty of Airbnbs and five-star hotels for you to relax in.

• Even though we went to Iceland in the Fall, which is technically off season for tourists, most of the places we visited were still very crowded, especially around Reykjavik.

• We stuck to the coastline for the most part. It is not that we didn’t have any interest in exploring the highlands towards the center of the island, they look awesome, but you can only get there via F-Roads, which are strictly off-limits for vehicles that don’t have four-wheel-drive. There is plenty to see and do around the coastline, much more than we could fit into the ten days we had for our trip, which was enough to convince us to avoid the F-Roads. That combined with the fact that the huge price difference between renting a regular car and renting a car with four-wheel-drive would have put us way over budget.

• The first half of September had a relatively normal day to night ratio, and temperatures probably got down just below freezing on the coldest night of our trip.

If you made it all the way down here, I just want to say thank you so much for reading this article. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this travel guide, in addition to the accompanying gear guide and the upcoming, nine-part video series that will air weekly on my YouTube channel over the next couple months.

Special thanks to Yair, DBro and MichaBub for making this trip as great as it was. I had an epic time!