When we first started planning our trip around the world (two months prior to our departure) I listed Iceland as one of the places I really wanted to visit. The Ben Stiller movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty certainly sold Iceland to me as a place to visit (yes, the movie says Walter flies to “Greenland”, but the reality is that the movie was filmed in Iceland.)
Our biggest concern was perhaps not being able to enjoy the beauty of nature by ourselves, seeing as Iceland is definitely growing as a tourism hot spot. With the advent of cheap flights (thank you Wow Air) to and from the United States, continental Europe and the UK, there is no surprise why tourists flock to Iceland to be blown away by the jaw-dropping nature (and also literally, when they experience gale-force winds like we did. But that’s a story for another time… :))
We chose to car camp for the entire length of our two-week road trip around Iceland, staying in a tent every night and catering for ourselves. We only bought one meal – which was, unsurprisingly expensive, but delicious nonetheless.
On the picture above you can see a car and a tent – yep, that’s the 4WD we hired and the tent we recently upgraded to (our previous ultralight tent was a leaky timebomb..)
Everyone has seen photos of the magnificent waterfalls – and until now nothing really compares to the waterfalls I have seen in Iceland. But finding a brown sandy beach was quite a surprise too, because most of the beaches we had seen up to that point were black sand beaches (due to the lava and volcanic activity).
One of the benefits of visiting Iceland when we did (mid-late June) was seeing puffins. We spent hours just marvelling at these cute little birds!
Nathan taking photos right by a sheer cliff. Thankfully there were no gusts of wind… or else that would have ended our trip.
This spot reminded us so much of a scene out of a video game.
The downside of sleeping in a semi-translucent tent in Icelandic summer is that it never got dark enough to properly sleep. We made do with using our buffs as eye masks though. But the upside of sleeping in a tent in Icelandic summer is waking up to cute domestic goats, who thankfully did not destroy our very new tent.
Nathan and PK 