Link to all photos

Iceland is amazing, beautiful, expensive, spectacular, crowded sometimes, green, full of craggy hills, sheep, and waterfalls... and has toilet rules.

Ordering ice cream is tricky when a translation is not present on the menu. Oh wait, they all speak English, so what's the problem and why am I cracking up uncontrollably?

Beer? Very good but astronomically expensive. I saw a double IPA listed for 1800 ISK (close to $18) during one of our stops. No, I did not have one, but did pay 1200-1400 several times. Ironically the cheapest beer was at happy hour on our last day at the Hilton in the capital city. Only 750 ISK because it was half price!

Day1 We hit the ground running after a red eye flight and minimal sleep. We decided to hit the touristy spots of the Golden Circle on the first day on our drive toward Vík. Stops included Þingvellir National Park (Thingvellir), Geyser, and Gullfoss. Foss means falls obviously. They are everywhere. All these places were packed with tourist buses and people but I am still glad we stopped.

Rift where continental plates meet in Þingvellir

Crokur erupts at Geyser

Gulfoss

Day2 The locals are great. We received 2 awesome tips, the first from the receptionist, waitress, cook at the guest house we stayed at on our first night. She told us to make the drive into Þakgil (Thakgil) and hike out there and so we did. The hike up the Mælifell trail was amazing and we had a perfect sunny clear day to take in the lush green views of the mountains, canyons, and out to the sea. A tricky hike as the second half of the hike there was no trail, just make your way over the land from post to post, on spongy moss covered hills, up to the top of Mælifell and then down the ridge. It was a very tricky, even scary descent on a scree ridge not much wider than single track with a drop of hundreds of meters on either side. It did scare me quite a bit to be honest but I felt alive after making it and I did not hesitate.

Hills

Start of Canyon Below Glacier

Glacier

Mælifell

Trudging up Mælifell

View to the Sea

Scary Descent

View up to scary ridge

Day3
The night before, while drinking an expensive beer at our guesthouse (a different one) and talking to the local proprietor he told us about a natural pool up in a canyon that we could hike into for a swim in natural hot springs water. So our day started with a drive up to Selfavallalaug, a short hike into the canyon, and a relaxing swim and soak in the hot pool. It was actually a pool filled with hot water from geothermal springs and had been in existence since 1923. Weather was cool, damp, cloudy, and drizzly. Perfect for this type of activity.

Views from Hot Pool

Afterwards, we took a long drive east (140km) to the glacier park at Skaftefell. The weather had warmed up and we had some sunshine as we hiked uphill on a nice bit of single track trail with great views of the glacier and "ice beach". Further hiking took us by several waterfalls of course. After the hike, it was late in the afternoon and we sort of nixed any plans to circumvent the island on the ring road. We decided to head back the Vík area as we had one more big hike on our bucket list for this trip.

Glacier

Svartifoss

Day4
The plan for the day was to hike the famous Fimmvörðuháls trail starting at Skogafoss. We had tried to work put logistics to hike point to point to Þorsmark but logistics to get returned to our starting point would be very expensive and include a 25km hitchike as well. So we decided to hike out/back to hiker's shelter hut at the halfway point. We had more of Icelandic weather day here with temperatures around 10C with clouds and about 5C or less with rain near our turn around 920m above sea level. The hike up was legendary. What seemed like hundreds or waterfalls gushing and roaring through bright moss green canyons. About 8k into the hike we entered the volcanic moonscape and the weather turned much colder and rainy. On the way down, we had wind too as we were heading back towards the sea. Despite the chill we found it the perfect and appropriate way to finish this epic hike. LOL, even jogged a few sections on the way down as we seemed to be in a race with a pair of jeans cladded European hikers. We beat them of course, but they did take an early lead.

Skogafoss

More Waterfalls

Canyon Views

Volcanic Wasteland

Day5
Last full day in Iceland. Our travels had us overnight in a town called Hveragerði. We could not pronounce this so simply called it Herdy Gerdy Town. Quite accidentally, through random last minute booking we ended up here, and it is also known as the hot springs capital of the world. The mountains nearby were literally steaming. We woke up early and were on the trail at Reykjadular by 6am, for a short hike to the hot river where we started our day with a pleasant soak in a river with water temps around 40C. Probably the easiest trail we had been on all week, and if I had been so bushed from yesterday's 25km hike, something we could have run.

The remainder of the day we drove back towards the capital and then north towards Hvalfjörður, a beautiful large fjord. We took the long tunnel underneath then looped around the fjord and made a few stops, most notably at Glymur Falls, where did a crazy hike up to the top of Iceland's highest waterfall. Then our trip was all but done, other than a fantastic 7 course gourmet meal in the city.

Hot River Ahead

Fjord View

Glymur Falls

Fjord in the distance

Great trip and trip report!  Thanks for posting all the beautiful pics.  I'm very glad to hear you got some tips from the locals and especially get away from all the tour buses.  I find some of the best and most rewarding places take a bit of work to get to.  And nice hair-raising hike up that scree ridge.  If I ever go, I'll be sure to take notes from your report, and I'll budget 1/2 my spending money for beer (no ice cream). 

Spectacular views....wow!  Nothing wrong with not running on vacation.  Was alcohol expensive?

Well I meant could you get booze for cheap instead of the expensive beer.  Just checking for a friend

Berto - It was down the scary ridge. I butt slid part of it. I wish I would have took a photo when we came to that post at the edge of the mossy hillside. I looked over and said holy shit. We thought it was a bit of hijinks by the trail designers, but there really was no other way down. Only dicey for a few hundred meters that felt like a thousand.

 

AT - No beer in stores, other than some 2% crap that I was not buying. There are government stores for beer but it wasn't high on our agenda to find one. Two beers at the end of the day with dinner... it wasn't too bad on the wallet. Especially since the guesthouses served breakfast as part of the boarding/room rate. I'd say there were only short runnable sections on most of the trails we did, other than the path to the hot springs. Neither of us were in a big hurry to cover any of the routes. The 25k hike though... took 6.5 hours. Lots of photo stops. Most were that way.

 

Queenie - Beer price is buried in here somewhere. Very expensive. I paid anywhere from 750-1500 ISK for a beer, or 7.50-15$. :shocked:

Looks like a great trip.  I don't have a huge desire to travel to many other countries but this is one that would make the short list.   Thanks for the link to all the pictures.

Wow!! Thanks for sharing the pics and report. Iceland is on my short list, but now I know to BYOB, too.  Or just plan to abstain.

You sure covered a lot of territory in a relatively short time!  Amazing hikes and pics.  Not surprised that beer was so pricy, sounds like the rest of Scandinavia.

Iceland has been on my to-do list for a while, just gotta make it happen!  Thanks for sharing.

Wow. That looks like a fantastic trip.