EXPLORING ICELAND ON THE RING ROAD: ROAD TRIP TRAVEL GUIDE AND UNDERRATED SPOTS TO VISIT
During my early travel days, Iceland never stood out to me as I had little knowledge of the island, having been taught nothing about it during my years of schooling. Iceland felt unreachable and so northern that it might have well been another world.
In December of 2021 I had a short layover there flying from London Heathrow to Boston- the little amount of views that I had confided to the plane and airport windows were so unreal, I promised myself I would go back and visit as soon as possible. I saved up some money after my travels to in March and flew back to Reykjanesbær in April 2022 for a springtime road-trip around the entirety of the 39,000 mi² island country and it was absolutely indescribably insane.
SKÓGAFOSS WATERFALL
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RING ROAD OVERVIEW
The Ring Road, or þjóðvegur 1 (Route 1) is the 825 mile long main road that loops around the entire perimeter of Iceland. It can be driven entirely in only a couple of days, you could actually do it non-stop in 24 hours.
Renting a car and making the road trip is the best way to see Iceland and a good amount of the long list of all that it has to offer. Most of the country’s population lives in the urban areas in and around Reykjavik, so you will not be able to travel the Ring Road by public transportation.
As the drive circles the entire perimeter of the island, the landscape changes from steep mountains, lava fields, black sand deserts, frozen lagoons filled with glaciers and more as the miles go on, and though I had such little knowledge in my past about Iceland, I was right about it might as well being another world.
The landscapes are just so unexplainably unearthly at many points it felt like Mars.
With the island’s population being under 380,000 people, a lot of the trip was spent out in silence in bare fields and black sand beaches for miles as far as the eye could see, or by the towering snow capped mountains that are older, taller, and wiser than I can wrap my head around. The feeling is amazing.
We opted out of the touristy spots like the Blue Lagoon, and traded it for the middle of nowhere.
Some people will stick to certain bigger towns to stay overnight, some people may pull over and camp outside in a random spot overnight.
We essentially ended up stopping and staying at whatever looked coziest and the cheapest along the route, no matter the town or village. That resulted in staying in the absolute middle of nowhere during multiple nights.
If you are a US or an EU citizen, you do not need a visa to visit Iceland as it is a Schengen country, just a valid passport, allowing stay up to 90 days visa free. There is no tourist tax.
HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU NEED ON THE RING ROAD?
There is so much to see in Iceland that you could spend weeks making the trip around, but 7-10 days is the perfect minimal amount of time that will allow you to see a good number of the many beautiful things that the country has to offer.
It took us 7 days plus a night in Reykjavik, and we had enough time to comfortably see a great number of the amazing sights and spots the island has to offer. Next time I am in Iceland I will definitely stay well over a week to wonder off of the main route more and see more sights that are off the beaten path.
THE BEST TIME TO VISIT ICELAND
My visit was in mid April and the road conditions were perfect, and there were never any crowds. I aim to visit closer to the end of winter next time to see the northern lights, I just missed them in April. We did get the sunset around midnight which was actually so cool as well.
The spring and summer seem to be the most popular times to visit, along with the later winter months to see the northern lights like I mentioned.
It is probably not smart to make the road trip during the dead of winter, as November-March brings some pretty harsh conditions, and dark, cold days. Waterfalls may start freezing over, and sites tend to be closed more often, but the northern lights may outweigh a lot of that…visiting in mid-late march is a good compromise for that.
In the summer it will also be easier to visit the way off the beaten path destinations away from the ring road.
RENTING A CAR/CAMPER VAN IN ICELAND
No matter what season, you have to have a 4x4 car for a road trip to be able to drive a lot of the roads to get to the best spots.
There are two options to going about driving around the island.
-Rental car from the Keflavik Airport (Europcar, Avis, Budget Iceland, Hertz Iceland, etc.)
-Camper Van Rental (Happy Camper Van Rentals, Kuku Campers, Camper Van Iceland, etc.)
RENTAL CARS: At the Keflavik Airport, rental cars cost from $22 USD/day, which gets cheaper when you split it between friends if you’re not doing the trip solo.
CAMPER VANS: This is a popular option as these little vans are equipped with a kitchen, a bed, heat, all that you would need in place of accommodation. This option is more reasonable when you are traveling solo or with only one other person.
We chose to rent a little car and stayed in different hotels and Airbnbs every night, but next time I will most likely opt. for the camper vans rental.
GAS AND GAS STATIONS IN ICELAND
Currently, gas in Iceland costs around $2.75 USD/liter, so this is definitely one of, if not, the most costly expense that you will run into during the road trip.
In villages and towns, you will always be able to find some small gas stations, N1, Orkan, and OB being some examples. Some will be basically just a small gas pump or two, and some gas stations will be a whole production, whether it be a restaurant, a coffee shop, a farm supply store, tourism center, anything that you can think of.
Outside of these villages and towns, you will be able to drive for miles, maybe even hours, without seeing a gas station, so it is important to be mindful of how much gas you may have before driving certain distances.
DRIVING ON THE RING ROAD
The drive was always easy as it is really just a straight shot single road, and most of the time you are the only one in sight, and miles away from any villages on rural roads outside of Reykjavik and Akureyri.
There are times where you might end up taking little roads off of the route to get to some different spots, and be prepared for these little roads to be a little intense.
We did end up on the side of a mountain completely unable to see the winding steep roads in the fog and snow in the absolute middle of nowhere, surrounded by only a random group of Icelandic snowmobilers. Classic.
One thing that was crazy was the tunnels that run through the huge mountains.
These dark 1-5 mile long tunnels are all one way roads where you pull over into spots on the side of the road to let the traffic coming from the opposite direction pass. Fáskrúðsfjarðargöng (? Hello?) tunnel is 4 miles long and very insane. Other than that and lots of one way traffic bridges it was easy.
We drove the route counter-clockwise which I recommend for really no good reason other than most of my favorite parts were in the eastern and southern part of the island, you can do the route clockwise in the same amount of time.
ACCOMMODATION IN ICELAND ON THE RING ROAD
As tourism is one of the greatest contributors to Iceland’s economy, there are a very good amount of places to stay along the ring road, whether it be hotels, hostels, Airbnbs, cabins, campsites, you name it.
Among all of the accommodation options, guest houses are a very popular option that I enjoyed, run by sweet, local, Icelandic families.
TRAVEL INSURANCE FOR AN ICELAND ROADTRIP
If you are planning on doing the Ring Road trip around Iceland, it is definitely necessary to have travel insurance when traveling by car through such rural parts of this earth.
I continue to use SafetyWing.com when I travel.
It is such a small fee for peace of mind during your road trip.
SOME OF THE (UNDERRATED) BEST SPOTS ON THE RING ROAD
Most of my favorite spots that we hit during our trip ended up being places that we passed by or heard of from word of mouth. We could have hit dozens of more little spots like these if we spent more time and explored more but again I will hit them next time when I wonder around further.
GRJÓTAGJÁ CAVE
Grjótagjá (Icelandic for ‘rock ravine’) is a hidden lava cave with insane clear blue water and heated from geothermal spring way deep within the earth and it is insanely cool.
Since the 18th century the locals would use the hot spring as the village’s communal bathing spot until the Krafla volcanic system erupted nine (9!!) times from 1975 to 1984 which made the water boil to 122°F.
Grjótagjá is up in the northern part of the island near lake Mývatn and from the road just looks like a bunch of rocks. You will see some signs at the mouth of the cave and from there you will have to climb down in between the rocks and it will open up to the beautiful open clear water hot spring.
GLJÚFRABÚI WATERFALL
GljúfrabúI Waterfall, also named Gljúfrafoss, is an unreal 131ft high waterfall in a canyon hidden behind a cliff that is a short walk north from its much more widely known neighbor, Seljalandsfoss, on the southwest part of the island, about 1 hour and 50 minutes outside of Reykjavik.
You will enter through the open crack in between the cliffs and walk through the small river to get to the waterfall’s base in the canyon.
Even though GljúfrabúI is much less known and less visited than its surrounding sites on the southern coast, it was my favorite waterfall that we hit on the trip, and one of my favorite moments on the trip overall. It is so unexplainable until you see it in real life.
SÓLHEIMASANDUR PLANE WRECK
The Sólheimasandur Plane Wreck is far from a little known word of mouth spot but it definitely is off the grid. During the afternoon of November 21st, 1973 a US Navy plane that was delivering goods to the us radar station on Stokkses crashed onto a vast black sand beach that the co-pilot of the plane, Gregory Fletcher described as “some place on the surface of the moon”.
“Some place on the surface of the moon” is a perfect way to explain the landscape where the plane went down, to get to the crash site you will walk almost three miles out onto the empty beach that feels like you might as well be walking on Mars. The gps coordinates for the wreck out on the black sand beach are (63 27.546-19 21.887).
READ MY POST ABOUT THE SÓLHEIMASANDUR PLANE WRECK HERE.
BRIDGE BETWEEN CONTINENTS, SANDVÍK
The Bridge Between Continents, or Miðlína, is a small little bridge that connects the visible North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate in Sandvík, on the Reykjanesbær Peninsula.
It really is just a little bridge but I think it is cool to ’technically’ be standing between the two continental plates, and it is super cool to see the split between the land.
The Mid-Atlantic rift that runs through western Iceland, is a mountain range on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean which is what separates the two continent’s plates. Because the rift runs through Iceland, the western part of the island and a good majority of the north are technically North American land, and the rest of the island is European land.
JÖKULSÁRLÓN GLACIER LAGOON
Jökulsárlón is a lagoon on the southern coast of the island right on Vatnajökull National Park, and is my one of my favorites because of the huge, turquoise icebergs spotted with black volcanic ash that fall off of Vatnajökull’s glaciers
The mountains and mirror like reflection off the water, when I start to think about it a little longer it makes me sad because this beautiful spot is a result of our increasingly warming planet.
The lagoon was not there up until the 1900s, when Vatnajökull’s glaciers that have been there for thousands of years began to melt. As the icebergs continue to melt and break off into the lake and eventually float off into the Atlantic, the glaciers will disappear and someday the lagoon may disappear as well.
Directly across from Jökulsárlón is Diamond Beach, a beautiful black sand beach with huge crystal clear blocks of ice broken off from the icebergs that look like diamonds, given the name.
AKUREYRI
Akureyri is a small town way up on the northern coast of the island, on the Arctic Ocean. It is considered bigger within Icelandic standards but it is just the right size to have enough in the town to make a nice stop during the drive to break up the longer stretches of the trip.
We used Akureyri as a stop to spend an afternoon and the night and it was a perfect place to chill after lots of driving, there were a couple of cute little cafes and restaurants and a beautiful big bookstore with a big music section filled with great records and CDs.
A little thing that was also cute was all of the red stop lights in Akureyri on the roads are red hearts, and that little detail was sweet enough to make it a factor in why I liked the town so much.
HÓLAR
Hólar is a sleepy little village out in the middle of nowhere way up north that is home to 76 full time residents where we spent the night in a little Airbnb. We spent the late afternoon and evening wandering around after a couple of hours of driving, the village is tiny but this was another place where you can almost feel the hundreds of years of history as you walk through the cemetery in front of the old stone church.
Hólar was the religious and educational capital of northern Iceland in the Medieval Ages from 1106 until 1798.
In the center of the town there is a little restored and maintained old traditional turf house turned museum that allows visitors to see what it would be like inside a home up in the northern part of the world in the early ages of the nordic settlers until the 19th century. The museum was just open, along with the old church house, with no costs and there was nobody else out or around, because again-middle of nowhere.
The stop was nothing more than just a place to sleep for the night while continuing on the route, but it ended up being a great night in the small village surrounded by the gigantic snow capped mountains and so much history.
GLAUMBÆR CHURCH AND TURF HOUSE
While driving the route way up in northern part of the island, we passed by a cool looking church with an insane view of the gray april sky meeting the mountains in the distance, and we turned the car around to walk around and get some pictures. When we pulled into the tiny parking lot we noticed that there was also a couple of small turf houses that looked to be a museum to the right of the church.
The exterior of the church is made of iron to protect it from the northern elements as some previous versions of the church apparently fell apart and blew away in the strong winds. There has been a farm in the spot where the church and museum are since before the year 900-there have even been viking ruins found on the farm. That is absolutely insane.
The current turf/farm house that we visited was built in the mid-late 18th century with the last addition being made in 1879.
This was one of the places in Iceland where I could almost feel the hundreds and hundreds of years of history in the atmosphere while walking around. I am so thankful that we turned around and made that stop.
ELDHRAUN LAVA FIELD
Eldhraun is a huge 218 sq mile long lava field from the year long Laki Eruption of 1783 that you will pass through while driving the southern stretch of the Ring Road. We had no knowledge of this lava field and what we were driving through but we pulled over into a lookout area and the view that we found was unreal-Eldhraun is the largest lava field in the world.
Looking out on the endless moss covered lava into the distance was like looking out at a desert on some other planet. This is a short stop but it was really cool to see.
Iceland overall is otherworldly.
How lucky am I to live in such close proximity to a place that I thought was so far away, or at least closer compared to the rest of most of the continental United States. The Arctic and the North itself is so interesting to me, I can’t wait to get back up there, to get to Iceland again, and to get to Greenland, Svalbard, Alaska and Canada and more.
THINKING OF TRAVELING TO ICELAND? DO IT.
HERE ARE ALL OF THE RESOURCES I USE TO PLAN MY TRIPS:
FLIGHTS AND ACCOMMODATION: BOOKING.COM IS WHAT I WILL ALWAYS USE TO BOOK FLIGHTS AND STAYS. NEVER DONE ME WRONG.
TOURS, DRIVERS, AND ALL THAT FUN STUFF: VIATOR IS MY GO-TO.
TRAVEL INSURANCE: SAFETYWING HAS ALWAYS BEEN FABULOUS. THE BEST EVER.
RENTAL CARS: WHEN BOOKING YOUR RING ROAD TRIP, OR ANY TRIP THAT YOU DECIDE TO RENT A CAR FOR, BOOKING.COM IS FABULOUS LIKE ALWAYS.
