Road trip Iceland , March 2017 part 1

Many people have a sort of a bucket list which includes a list of must seen countries. For me, most of them are tropical places with an easy going vibe, bounty beaches, delicious food and beautiful landscapes. But there are a few countries where you won't go for the nice weather, food or the easy going vibe... you only go there because it offers you something you won't find in 80 to 90% of all other travel destinations.

Iceland is one of those countries. It's 40000 square metre big and only has 330000 citizens where most of them live in and around Reykjavik. Iceland offers you complete desolated landscapes...a never ending road, fjords, glaciers, geysers , volcano's, ice lakes , hot springs, the most beautiful waterfalls and a good bit of wildlife. Most tourists go there during summertime but if you're there between september and early april... you have a big chance to see the aurora borealis.

Last year, march 2017 I finally went there for an 8 day round-trip and it was even better than what I ever could imagine. Along with my wife, my best friend @borhide and his wife...we rented a car and booked ourself a few cottages down the road. For the record, Iceland has only 1 main road...the ring road, so it was like the most easy road trip I've ever experienced (No GPS needed!). If you have a good 4X4 truck you can travel through the wilderness of central Iceland, which must be awesome, but we opted for the less risky roundtrip.

On our first 2 days we did what almost every tourist does when he visits Iceland... we did the golden circle to see the Strokkur Geyser

!

The magnificent Gullfoss waterfall

And some stunning viewpoints around Thingvellir National Parc, like the Thingvallavatn

From there we drove 3hrs up to Grundarfjordur, a small village in the Snaefellsnes peninsula area. This town is famous for its orca boat trips. Unfortunately, and it still hurts me when I look back at it... due to extreme bad weather conditions (the wind was so strong that we were literally blown away) our tour was cancelled and there was no option to do it the day after. It just wasn't meant to be :-(

Anyway we stayed there for one night in a very very small cottage...

with a view on one of the most photographed mountains of Iceland, the Kirkjufell Mountain...which was one of the film locations for season 6/7 of Game of Thrones

IMG_0250.JPG

The day after, we went for a 5/6 hrs ride up North to Akureyri

The best was still to come...