Around Iceland in a campervan
In August 2016, we travelled to Iceland for the first time.
We had eleven days and a fairly simple idea: rent a campervan and try to drive around the whole island using the Ring Road.
The van we collected in Hafnarfjörður became our car, kitchen and bedroom for the entire trip.
At Kuku Campers, every vehicle has a huge illustration painted on its side.
Ours was called “The Ram” and had an enormous goat-like character on the bodywork.
After buying food, the trip began with a small disappointment.
The Blue Lagoon was fully booked for the entire week.
We hadn’t reserved anything.
So instead, we simply drove to Grindavík and spent our first night camping there.
It was the middle of August and the nights were still extremely bright.
Going to bed while it was barely dark outside felt very strange.
The real loop began the following morning.
Visiting the Golden Circle in Iceland
First came the Golden Circle: Þingvellir and its huge geological rift, followed by Geysir.
The original geyser is now mostly inactive, but nearby Strokkur erupts regularly, sending boiling water around twenty metres into the air.
Then came Gullfoss, where you can hear the waterfall before you properly see it.
The south coast road in Iceland
The following day, at Hveragerði, we set off somewhat casually in search of the hot springs.
After around an hour of walking, we reached the Reykjadalur river, surrounded by steam and geothermal vents.
Some parts of the water are far too hot to enter.
The trick is finding exactly the right spot where colder water mixes with the hot spring.
Of course, because we had started the walk without really knowing where we were going, we had barely brought any drinking water.
Perfect organisation.
The route then continued along Iceland’s south coast.
At Seljalandsfoss, you can walk behind the waterfall and emerge completely soaked.
Further east, at Skógafoss, a long staircase climbs above the falls.
We also made a detour to Seljavallalaug, an old outdoor swimming pool built at the foot of the mountains and fed by a natural hot spring.
Later that day, we walked around four kilometres across a huge black plain to reach the wreck of an abandoned DC-3 aircraft.
It was late, but thanks to the long summer daylight, the conditions were still beautiful and there were almost no other visitors.
At Dyrhólaey we saw the cliffs and our first puffins.
The next day, the landscape changed again.
Walking on a glacier in Iceland
At Skaftafell, we booked a three-hour guided walk on the Svínafellsjökull glacier.
We strapped on crampons and learned how to move across ice streaked with black volcanic ash.
Our guide clearly loved glaciers.
He regularly buried his ice axe into the surface simply because he enjoyed the sound, ate pieces of glacier ice and told stories about films and television series that had been shot in the area.
Further east came Fjallsárlón and Jökulsárlón, two glacial lagoons filled with icebergs.
Some were white.
Others were intensely blue.
Some had dark bands of volcanic ash running through them.
And on the opposite side of the road, pieces of ice washed up onto the black sand of what is now known as Diamond Beach.
Crossing eastern Iceland was much less peaceful.
The east of Iceland
For more than four hours, we drove at night through fog on roads that occasionally became so rough that we began to wonder whether our small campervan had somehow ended up on a track intended for four-wheel drives.
Eventually, we reached Egilsstaðir.
The following day, after hiking to Hengifoss, we continued towards Lake Mývatn.
On the way, we stopped at an isolated farm for a waffle with whipped cream and homemade jam, under the watchful eye of a small goat.
Then it was back to another planet.
Hverir and Námafjall are filled with coloured earth, boiling mud and clouds of steam.
And, like many geothermal areas in Iceland, a very persistent smell of sulphur.
That evening, we bathed in the Mývatn Nature Baths.
Those did a perfectly good job of replacing the Blue Lagoon.
The next day was spent exploring the area around the lake: the cave at Grjótagjá, the strange lava formations at Dimmuborgir and the volcanic landscape around Krafla.
Then came Dettifoss.
More than forty metres high and around one hundred metres wide, the waterfall is enormous.
Once again, we finished the visit soaked.
Whale watching in Iceland
The road north towards Húsavík then became a rather uncomfortable gravel track.
And in Húsavík, summer suddenly felt much less convincing.
It was still August, but temperatures in the evening were approaching zero.
The next morning, we went out to sea for around three hours and eventually found two humpback whales, which surfaced repeatedly around the boat.
From there, the journey crossed much of northern Iceland towards the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.
The Snæfellsnes Peninsula in one day
In rain and fog, we climbed the Saxhóll crater, watched seals at Ytri Tunga and attempted to see Kirkjufell.
One of Iceland’s most photographed mountains remained mostly hidden behind cloud.
A quick visit to Reykjavík
So we continued towards Reykjavík for the penultimate day.
After ten days of waterfalls, volcanoes, glaciers and almost empty roads, suddenly finding cafés, restaurants and busy streets felt slightly strange.
We visited Hallgrímskirkja, walked to the harbour and the Sun Voyager sculpture, then spent one final quiet night in Hafnarfjörður.
By the end of the journey, the van’s odometer showed roughly 1,500 kilometres.
Eleven days had been enough to travel around the island.
But definitely not enough to see everything.
This trip also changed more than our holidays.
Back home, the video we made of it won the Kuku Campers competition, and our stories and photos became a first blog, islanderoadtrip.fr.
Three years later, after Victor was born, it became Trois Pas de Côté.
So this map is also where our blog began.
And when we returned “The Ram”, we already had another idea in mind.
One day, we wanted to come back in winter.
To see the same island under snow.
And hopefully, next time, under the Northern Lights.
