Self Drive Iceland

Don't know if you saw this article about driving in Iceland. if you're not too careful, you too could become a famous American. Perhaps start a trend...

Iceland is one of the most beautiful places I've ever traveled, and one of my favorite destinations in Europe. I'm always happy to see those who are planning on a trip longer than just a couple days -- for so many it seems to be treated as a stopover rather than a destination unto itself. I've traveled the full circumference of the Ring Road and the driving is easy. The only problems you may run into are when you decide to get off of the Ring Road. Some locations are subject to high winds -- some areas even have digital signage showing the wind speed. The mountains can be dangerous due to the cold temperatures, snow, and ice, even in summer. If you stick to the main highways, you shouldn't need a 4x4. I can't help you on recommendations however as my wife and I were on a guided tour during most of our trip and only were on our own in the Reykjavik area.

As far as experiences, there are too many to get into a great amount of detail. I enjoyed Geysir, Vik, Jokulsarlon, Akureyri, the eastern fjords, the Myvatn baths (which I liked more than the Blue Lagoon -- much less touristy), and of course Reykjavik itself. And then there are all the waterfalls -- again, too many to go into detail on, but Svartifoss, Gulfoss, Skogafoss, and Seljalandsfoss are the ones that come immediately to mind.

I have wished the same thing as you that RS would delve more into Iceland. Some will say that RS doesn't have anything more to add to what Lonely Planet has already said, but I still think it would be nice to have his personal perspective and advice. In the meantime, there are a few of us around who have been to Iceland and seen more than just the Golden Circle/Reykjavik area.

Plenty others cover Iceland. I went with Discover the World, a UK based company that offer fly drive holidays or tailor made holidays. Highly recommended.

Carolyn,

We just booked a fly drive package with Icelandair called Around Iceland Driving Tour. This package includes, car, cdw, hotels w/breakfast, fly bus plus transfers to and from the airport, SIM card for your cell phone, gps, maps, itinerary. The itinerary takes you from Reykjavik clockwise all the way around the island. You may want to check this one out. I can't tell you how good it is because we haven't done it yet but you may want to consider it. One thing I have learned in my research on Iceland to date is to spring for the ash/gravel insurance, windshield insurance and super cdw for the car rental. I have heard that there can be fierce dust storms in Iceland that will strip the paint off the car and if you drive on gravel roads you can get damage to the windshield. Both of these incidents would cost a lot of money to repair so we are going with the extra insurance which is something we don't normally do. But I have read a lot of horror stories. Also photograph the rental car for any damage before you leave the lot so that you don't get charged for something you didn't do. Lonely Planet is a really good reference guide. I hope this helps. We are looking forward to this trip in June.

Hello! My husband and I used Iceland Unlimited for our self-drive tour. The man who helped us with our trip, Theo, no longer works there, but I'd still highly recommend the company! Everything we needed was covered: car, lodging, breakfast, gps, map, itinerary, cell phone. We booked the 'comfort' package and were blown away by the quality of the hotels/guesthouses. Honestly, the places were too nice in our opinion, since we really only slept there. If I were to do it again through a tour company, I'd go with the budget option. The morning of our journey, we met Theo at the Iceland Unlimited office and he sat down with us for about a half an hour and wrote down notable places to stop on our map. It was so helpful! Along the road we fortunately didn't have any trouble, but the staff was easy to contact if we needed them.

I am officially in love with Iceland now and so glad that I chose to do the ring road for my first trip. I'd love to answer any questions you have! I also have a very thorough Google map that I can share with you, if you're interested. (just send me a private message)

Happy travels!