Thursday, April 10, 2014

An ICELAND Road Trip ((Day 4))

We woke up very early the next morning and grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel before venturing out on our very first {and only} road trip! We didn't know what to expect but we were prepared with our Skoda, GPS and a plan. We headed from Reykjavik to our first destination: Jökulsárlón. We left around 9 am knowing that we wouldnt be back for a couple of days since we had planned to stay 1 night in Reynisfjara and one night at Ion Hotel in Thingvellier National Park. The drive was supposed to take about 4 hours but took closer to 5 1/2 due to the weather conditions. Then, the plan was to head back in the same direction we came for 2 more hours so that the next day we didn't have to do a crazy long drive again. We wanted to drive in the daylight because driving at night in unknown conditions scared the crap out of us.
Bottom line: The drive down the Southern Coast was breathtakingly beautiful. I heard another tourist describe it like this: It looks like someone just unrolled a backdrop and placed it there, it doesn't look or seem real. But it is. Trust me.


We saw a lot of roundabouts:

 Just your usual waterfall on the side of the road.


We encountered some snowy, blizzard like conditions but nothing our SKODA couldn't handle. We drove over mountain passes which felt like sheets of ice and we didn't slide once. Doesn't mean I wasn't nervous though.


Driving over the mountain pass into Vik was an adventure to say the least.

The saying in Iceland is, if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes. And it's very true.


Jökulsárlón was one of the highlights for me. It's where glaciers head out to the ocean and it's sometimes a very slow process, we got to see a few glaciers move and break off into the ocean. Very cool!







Then, we proceeded to drive back for about 2 hours in the same direction that we had just come from. This is the most remote part of Iceland we had ever seen. Very desolate. We could drive for about 20-30 minutes without even seeing another car. Below is our little cabin, right on the "beach" - if you can call it that. It's under a huge blanket of snow. Needless to say, we didn't get to explore the beach like we had hoped, but we did enjoy our cozy cabin in Reynisfjara.



View from said cozy cabin in the southernmost point of Iceland:

At one point Jake said, "I feel like we are going to drive off the end of the world." It was true, we just drove and drove and drove but it was such beautiful scenery we could have driven forever.

3 comments:

  1. This is so incredibly beautiful!! Lovely blog.
    Would love it if you'd follow mine too :)
    All the best,
    Nadia x.

    www.travelhelphopelove.blogspot.com

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  2. I love the pictures!!!! SOO BEAUTIFUL!

    ReplyDelete