To be honest, I have never imagined myself traveling to Iceland. But I couldn’t imagine traveling my first trip there without the two girls who pulled me into their trip this time around- D and N who both are seasoned travelers and were very much the backbone of the trip.
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| Hamad International Airport (HIA) Doha, Qatar- 1st layover |
I practically knew nothing much about Iceland, so I couldn’t really imagine planning in detail for the journey, so much of the itinerary was based on this website: https://fullsuitcase.com/4-days-in-iceland/
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| The first draft of the itenarary, to roughly know what's there and where the places are. Sneafellsness is located in the purple circle |
I didn’t really have much time to probe around further and list other potential places/tours, but since we had an extra day to travel, we added in Sneafellsness Peninsular. Most of the tourist attractions are on the South Ring Road hence Sneafellsness which is more to the western tip of Iceland wasn’t on the itinerary in the first place. Apart from the South Ring Road, our next big thing, which was why the trip was on in the first place was the Aurora chase. You’ll find out what happens in the next few entries.
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| Breakfast in Heathrow Airport, London our 2nd layover while waiting for the last flight into Iceland |
Anyway, this log is more for my future
references, but if it helps you, go ahead. Be warned that there will be tonnes
of pictures because, in all honesty, I’m still amazed at all the different
landscapes, sceneries, and weather that we went through throughout the trip-
it’s totally a different sight to see coming from the equator and you
could just see and appreciate how great God’s creations are.
So on to the basics:
1) Choose your month carefully. Winter has short daytime and perhaps less time for sightseeing so maybe you’d need a longer duration of the vacation. We were told that the best time to see Aurora is around October-November when it’s about to start winter. Summer, on the other hand, will give you totally different sceneries and perhaps a lot more tourists around. We decided to go around March because Ramadhan falls in April.
2) Weather: Iceland’s weather is pretty unpredictable, especially around wintertime. We went towards the end of March, which was still during winter but at the tail end of it- still a lot of rain and snow and wind but on good days we got clear sky and sunshine. Do check the daytime hours, sunrise, and sunset on the days you’re having your trip. That said, keep in mind that the weather can change instantly too so you probably have to be flexible with your plans.
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| Found this in the pocket on Iceland Air |
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| True, this |
3) Driving seat is on the left side, so if you’re coming from South East Asia like us, we drive on the right side back home; it takes a bit of time time to get used to but definitely do-able, although you do need someone to keep a tab on your driving because everything is just the other way round including the roundabout.
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| Introducing your first driver, yours truly, thank you. Lucky these girls keep reminding me of the turning and whatnot |
4) Taking into consideration the two above points if you go in summer or not-winter time, driving would probably be easier. In winter, it could be challenging. So do make some research about the driving conditions during the month you’re making your trip. Iceland is all about maintaining the natural habitat and nature hence most of the out-of-town roads are single lanes and some off-roads gravel roads too. Winter could be icy-road all the way or muddy, wet roads and you have to switch on your lights at all times. A lot of websites warned that apart from changing weather, the one thing that you need to be on the lookout for is other drivers on the road because you may not know how they would behave. And stick to the speed limit- I mean it, especially when we’re not used to driving on the icy roads.
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| This was on day 2, at a stop and viewpoint on the way to Golden Circle. |
5) If you have no confidence in driving, or are going in a smaller group or solo trip- don’t drive but book tours instead. There are a lot of tour groups that you can scout and book online- from day-trip to days-trip. Most places have day-tour trips from Reykjavik including Sneafellsness Peninsular, Golden Circle, Blue Lagoon, Vik/Diamond Beach/Glacier hike tour, and even aurora tours. You will probably have to do a lot of research on this though- there is a lot of information online. Unfortunately, Reykjavik doesn’t have a central tourist center rather they are scattered throughout the city hence your best bet is still online. But the good thing is, they are quite prompt with their replies via email so online is still the best way to deal with it.
6) Accommodation: There are a lot of hotels and BnBs in Reykjavik but limited at the outskirts. My suggestion is to plan the places you wanna see first and then see where the nearest accommodations are and work around that. We made our trip as far as Skaftafell/Jokulsarlon but now looking back I wonder if we could have gotten further east to Hofn. We did however decide that we wanted an “our pace” trip, slow and steady knowing that we would be driving in winter and did not want to rush things through, so maybe these places next time should the opportunity arrives.
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| The view from our 1st BnB |
Our journey took a total of 27 hours from Kuala Lumpur to Reykjavik, via Doha and Heathrow. So we were pretty much jet-lagged and kinda disorientated when we first arrived… well, I was anyway, trying to make sense through the inability to sleep during the flight and sudden weather change- from tropical sunshine to sudden icy-cold around me. So my best advice is still to try to get as much sleep as you can while on the flight.
First thing first when you’ve gotten cleared from the custom and claimed your baggage- toilet, sim card, and car rental. Toilets are clean and well maintained. Simcard provides you with 5G of data at least, so bring a spare phone as a hotspot point- Waze is reliable throughout the journey, and our accommodations were easily found via Waze, even the off-road one. The car rental process however took a bit of time, but if you’ve booked it online, you just have to be patient.
We planned a few free nights in Reykjavik- on the first day of arrival, we booked the Aurora tour so that if it got canceled, we could rebook it again.
Which was what happened- the unfavourable
weather made it impossible to catch Aurora on the day we arrived so we decided
to unpack, have dinner at our BnB, and had a good rest instead.
Next: Part 2/9 Day 1 in Reykjavik
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