Jada Yuan: Going to Iceland for the first time, I had some idea of what to expect: tiny horses, stunning waterfalls, Jon Snow and the Wildlings. Nothing I imagined, though, could come close to the experience of being there in person. Just driving from the airport felt like landing on an alternate moon covered in moss and fog.
What made this leg of the 52 Places trip most exciting, besides being my first out of the Americas, though, was that Lucas Peterson, The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler columnist, was joining me. Lucas has been doing some version of my job for around three years now and ever since I started this crazy journey, he’s been a shoulder to lean on across WhatsApp data lines. We had never met, so we figured why not dive in with a three-day road trip?
Both of us wanted to avoid the crowds on the Golden Circle near Reykjavik. So instead, we headed north through the Snaefellsnes peninsula and then boarded a ferry (car and all) to the remote coastline of the Westfjords region. Here are our highlights.
— ‘Mossy Moonscapes’
Lucas Peterson: For me, the country’s endless natural beauty was the most impressive aspect of the trip and why I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Iceland to any curious traveler. Reykjavik is a charming place in its own right, but once you get past city limits, you feel like intrepid explorers in another world. You used the term “mossy moonscapes” a lot throughout the trip, which I found apt — to me it felt a little like we were members of the original “Star Trek” cast exploring a rogue planet.
Yuan: The line of yours that kept making me laugh was that you now understood the name of new Icelandic budget carrier WOW Air, because “wow” is all we kept saying. The landscape kept getting exponentially more beautiful as we headed north. That was a good lesson in pacing yourself. I’d insist we pull over at a lava field and then 30 minutes later we’d find a lava field 10 times better than that one. We pulled over so many times, we ran out of time to get close to the Snaefellsjokull glacier (sn-AYE-fell-yo-cool), where I’ve wanted to go for years. So I’d just say to first-timers, hit your must-sees early and meander afterward. What really got me was how wild and plentiful the sights are and how unencumbered the access is to them. In the town of Hofsos, a minute’s walk from the parking lot, we trekked on a seaside cliff of lava-formed basalt columns. After you left, I went to Gullfoss, the waterfall on the Golden Circle tourist route that is one of the most powerful in Europe. It’s worth a visit, especially close to midnight, for free. That’s the other thing, there was only about an hour of nighttime so everything was in a perpetual state of sunset.
— Embracing Hot Dogs, Skipping Shark
Peterson: I regret not trying kaestur hakarl, or fermented shark, on this trip — we just didn’t come across it. And while we passed a place in Reykjavik with whale steak and smoked puffin (6,500 krona, about $60, for a meal featuring both), we ultimately weren’t sure if that was something we wanted to support. Because we wanted to keep our costs low and the fact that we spent most of our time on the road with a video crew, we tended to live gas station to gas station. That meant a lot of packaged meats and cheeses, nuts and chips, and a particularly large number of hot dogs and ice cream cones — more than I’m proud of.
The pylsa, or hot dog, is certainly a point of national pride. We had some good ones at the popular stand Baejarins Beztu in Reykjavik. The standard dog, made primarily from lamb, comes with mustard, a kind of relish-y mayo and both raw and fried onions. And at only 450 krona, it was definitely among the cheapest food options in the city. But aside from that and a very good vanillusnudur (a vanilla-flavored sweet bun, 490 krona) at Braud & Co., I remember feeling slightly underwhelmed by the food situation.
Yuan: Agreed on Braud & Co. — but you’re forgetting all the pizza! I thought some of it was pretty good. I’m sorry you didn’t get to eat dinner at KEX Hostel, where we stayed. Their arctic char (2,350 krona) was delicious and relatively affordable, and the breakfast buffet (1,690 krona in advance and 1,990 krona the day of) easily ranks as one of the top three of my trip so far. Mostly, I remember thinking, Lucas is very dinner-focused — which I now realize was an asset. If you’re not paying attention to time, suddenly it’s 9 p.m. and every rural restaurant is closed and your evening meal is leftover chips from a hotel party — which happened to us.
Because not a lot grows on Iceland, I’d stick with things with limited imported ingredients, including skyr (like yogurt, but milder), baked goods, fish and soup.
Peterson: I remember that soup: all-you-can-eat mushroom soup and bread for 1,000 krona at Cafe Riis. A little salty, but unquestionably the best deal we found.
— The Pleasures of Driving
Peterson: Driving in Iceland is an adventure and mostly a pleasure — especially along the less-trafficked northern coastal route we took. The roads alternate between well-maintained to unpaved and barely there — with sometimes little warning when that might occur. We rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle, which I would recommend (but remember that off-road driving is illegal). Our car also had a manual transmission, which was fine for us, but may not work for some drivers. You can get an automatic, but be prepared to shell out extra money for it.
Yuan: I wish you had been there when the rental counter guys handed me a pamphlet titled “Driving in Iceland is different” with scary pictures of ways the car could get damaged: one-lane bridges, sheep crossings. Usually, I just go with the insurance provided by my credit card. I’m so glad you talked me into buying everything available, including coverage for rocks hitting our windshield. It’s important: In the remote north, a rock hit the car being driven by our videographers, Tim and Veda, and had to be towed four hours back to Reykjavik.
But, man, did I love driving there. After you left, I did a bus tour of “Game of Thrones” locations. While I loved nerding out with my guide, Raven, who wore a Man of the Night’s Watch outfit and reenacted a sword fight with a wedding party we happened upon, it was stifling not to be able to pull over on a whim. I had to drive around for hours afterward just to get it out of my system. — Going Local
Peterson: I was astounded to learn how quickly tourism has grown in Iceland over the past 10 years, thanks in part to dirt-cheap fares from airlines like WOW Air: from 485,000 foreign visitors in 2007 to over 2.2 million in 2017. It’s had a big impact on the local populace, too. One evening, after dinner at the restaurant Egill Jacobsen, we headed upstairs to a chic bar called Loftid, decked out with Edison bulbs and vintage sewing paraphernalia.
We struck up a conversation with the bartender and a customer seated at the bar. The customer mentioned that, because of the rising costs in Reykjavik, he was renting out his home on Airbnb — not for extra money, but because he was forced to in order to keep up with the high cost of living. Were you similarly impressed by tourism’s impact on the country and populace?
Yuan: The crazy thing about those tourist numbers is that Iceland’s population is 340,000, and 220,000 live in the Reykjavik area, so that means 10 times more tourists pass through the capital every year than there are residents. What I loved most, though, was the local sense of humor. On a free CityWalk tour of the capital, my guide, Tomas Shelton, made a lot of fun of Danes, told tales of the great Cod Wars, in which Icelandic fishermen cut the nets of British ships, and, most important, pointed me toward a 50-krona beer special at the cellar bar of Reykjavik University.
For anyone who wants to go really local, I would suggest public pools. They’re heated by geothermal activity and every town has one or many. (The Blue Lagoon — filled with tourists — and the Secret Lagoon are the best-known ones.) All have strict rules about bathing before you get in, so you just have to be OK with getting naked in front of strangers before you actually get to swim.
— Horses and Waterfalls
Peterson: My favorite activity of the trip was the horseback-riding tour, for which we paid 12,000 krona per person at Langhus Farm, in a gorgeous area of northern Iceland known to locals as Troll Peninsula. Surrounded by the Skagafjordur fjord and deep, foreboding mountainscapes that characterize much of the country, our guide, Lukka, explained: “It’s very easy to imagine trolls and giants all over the place.”
It was a perfect setting for an evening ride on Ylur (Icelandic for warmth), my small (but mighty) tawny-haired Icelandic horse. Icelandic horses, in addition to needing no vaccinations, are known for their unaggressive behavior because of the lack of predators, Lukka explained. We trotted and tolted (the term for a special gait of the Icelandic horse, like a smooth version of speed walking) along picturesque streams and pastures, dotted by swollen frost heaves in the grass.
Yuan: Agreed on the horse ride being incredible. (Warning to all lady travelers: You need a sports bra to handle the tolt.) I bonded more with Pila, Lukka’s very friendly sheepdog, and loved Lukka’s tales of the Vikings who settled the territory. Other than that, a major highlight was doing a Dive.Is “midnight sun” snorkeling tour in a dry suit, in the frigid, pristinely clear waters of Silfra, a fissure between continental plates in Thingvellir National Park. I had an amazing 100 meters of visibility. Lucas, I’m keeping the video of you trying to speak with frozen lips after the swim for future blackmail. — OK, More Waterfalls
Yuan: Can we just talk for a second about how many crazy good waterfalls we saw? I loved Gullfoss and getting really wet in Gljufrafoss, the secret cave waterfall next to Seljalandsfoss, known as “The Waterfall You Walk Behind.” And then there was Kolugljufur, just this sheer wall of force five minutes from the main road on the way home from the north. Did you have a favorite?
Peterson: We were winding our way in and out of the fjords when she spotted a particularly tall and impressive waterfall in the distance, pouring out of the side of a mountain. Would there be any way, we wondered aloud, of somehow making it over there? A few minutes later, I spotted a small unpaved road and made an unannounced left turn. I had a hunch it might lead to the waterfall — and it did. Iceland in particular seems to reward exploration. Taking a risk and heading off down an unfamiliar path always yielded good results for us — but maybe that’s just because Iceland seemed to be constantly one-upping itself in terms of natural beauty.
— Practical Tips
Peterson: The only thing that will take your breath away more quickly than the landscapes in Iceland are the prices. In contrast to the airfares — currently under $300 round-trip from New York City in August — the cost of nearly everything else is through the roof. Filling up your gas tank? That’ll be $80. A fast-food value meal? $20. One nice thing is that, for the most part, we found ourselves not needing any cash at all — most places, even small businesses, accept cards.
I recommend having some sort of data plan when you arrive or purchasing a SIM card at the duty-free shop upon arrival at Keflavik International Airport. A 10-gigabyte plan through Nova cost 3,499 krona and was fairly reliable — slightly more reliable than what you had, I think.
Yuan: What Lucas is trying to say is that I had a fancy international Verizon plan and he bought a local SIM card and only one of us had cell reception. (It wasn’t me.) Another big tip: Get gas whenever you see it. We went four hours without coming upon a station in the north.
Costs were so high, as you said, that we doubled up in a single room with twin beds, twice. And then at the hostel those prices tripled the day summer started. I was, however, very pleased with that Airbnb you found that had a hot tub and its own valley.
