Iceland road trip: Day 1, April 23,2017
We had our flight to Iceland Keflavik International airport at 8 AM from Copenhagen International airport. It was a 3.5 hour flight. The flight was 40% empty. We reached Keflavik around 9:30 AM. Yes, it is 2 hour behind the Central European time zone.
Flying away to my dream destination
We had scheduled a pickup from our camper car company, which is Kuku Campers (read more about them here) at 10:00 AM. In that half an hour window, we claimed our baggage. We did not have to go through any custom as we flew from another Schengen zone. Right after picking our backpack, we decided to get a sim for our phone. In Iceland, you really need it, especially, if you are going on a road trip. It’s lot better than getting a GPS as you are always connected to the internet and also you can call the company you rented your car from in case there is any emergency. There is a convenient store situated in the arrival section of the airport. We got a Vodafone starter kit, which included unlimited talk & text and 1 GB of data. 1 GB was just enough for us for 9 days. I did not use snapchat and instagram as much as I wanted. Lol. You may get a starter kit with more data.
A young lady came to pick us up. She was originally from Slovakia settled in Iceland. Nice woman. Gave us a lot of tips for our stay in Iceland. Kuku campers office is located in a city called Hafnarfjörður. After getting all the paperwork done, we set off to get inspired by Iceland.
So, this beauty was our home in Iceland for 7 nights
But first stop was a supermarket, called Kronan.
Kronan and Bonus are the two supermarkets which are relatively cheaper in Iceland
I don’t have to tell you how expensive Iceland is. So, it’s important you cook as much as possible on your tour. Our camper car, which was just a 2 wheeler, was equipped with a small stove and some cooking utensils. Therefore, we bought noodles, soups, eggs, bread, jam, and oil. Our goal was to cover as much of the ring road or route 1 as possible. If you don’t know already, route 1 or ring road is where you should be driving most of the time. This is where most of the attractions and gems of Iceland are located. It is called a Ring road as it makes a circle covering east, west, north, and south. Keflavik airport is situated in the southwest part of Iceland and most of the people go to the south first (south is most touristy), meaning they go in a counterclockwise direction, going south to east to north to west and back to the south. We started with the west part and ending up in one of the north west campsites called Olafsvik. Why did we take this route? Well, it is less crowded for starter. Also, there was a big wind storm in south approaching that night. Going clockwise made more sense.
Driving from the south west to the north west, we saw a lot of interesting things. There were no famous attractions, but whatever we saw were pretty scenic for us. This was the first time we came across the wild horses and oh my god, what a moment. I think spotting a wild horse for the first time in Iceland is a historical moment for everyone. Like for real.
Hello, cutie!
There was a spot for us to park. There was one horse close to the fence. And after seeing me, another horse came, and then another. They were so friendly. But don’t try to pet them or anything. I later read that these horses are being trained for horse riding and when tourists try to pet them, it affects their training. What I did was WRONG.
We kept on driving further north and stopping here and there if something catches our eye.
Sweet and simple church in Iceland
Icelandic sheep
Our objective was to reach the Ólafsvik campsite. Another objective was catch the Northern lights. We checked the website for the Northern Lights forecast and it was pretty high for that night. But after mid-April, northern lights are not easy to be seen as there is not much darkness left out there. So, we reached the campsite and guess what?It was closed. We did not see anyone there. We parked our car and honestly, we had everything we needed. So, we did not really need to use anything at the campsite anyway. We checked the weather again and it said it would be party cloudy where we were staying, meaning less chances of experiencing the northern lights. After debating for a while, we decided to stay at this campsite. We saw a couple of cars stopping by, but left finding out the site is closed. And there we were, on our first night in Iceland, all alone, with no one around, sleeping in a car to the sound of snow kissing the ground.
All set to sleep
We set the alarm for 12 AM to look our for the northern lights. We woke up at the scheduled time and saw nothing. Ah! A disappointment. I thought if we had slept somewhere it was less cloudy, we might have been lucky. We woke up again at 3 AM, and it was still dark except for one section and I saw something, which appeared to me the northern lights or maybe I am forcing myself to think they’re northern lights. We went back to the sleep.
So, that was day 1 of my Iceland ring road trip. Pretty adventurous and fun.