Iceland- Warmed heart, Cold body

ICELAND

For the most part of this post, we will let the pictures speak for themselves with a bit of
commentary.  Of course, even the pictures do not do justice to the wide eyes we had.


We arrived in Reykjavik around 10 am, being already used to the time difference, we
had a leg up on all the other Americans. :) Lindsey and I decided a couple months ago
to do Iceland the correct way--by camper van. We were swept into the glamour of driving
anywhere and sleeping anywhere we wanted. It was still definitely the way to see Iceland
(hostels and AirBnbs begin at about $120/night), but the “sleep anywhere” wasn’t as
straightforward as we first thought.


Iceland has had a HUGE tourism boom since they recovered from bankruptcy in 2008-2011.
The island is small, with 400,000 residents in the entire country, In 2009 as they were
beginning to emerge from financial crisis, they had 464,000 tourists visit. By 2016, there
were 1,800,000 tourists and last year 2,400,000. A huge boom, the infrastructure could not
handle such a large relative number of people. Recently, the government banned camper
vans from parking overnight anywhere except designated (...paid) campsites. The police
would just leave a ticket on your windshield as a good morning gift, so we decided not to
chance it and just pay for campsites….to park our van in.


Rather than give you our minute by minute playback, we will just sum things up here with
many pictures and only a few words… We completed the Golden Circle and the Ring Road.
We camped in a van, we hiked, we took pictures, we ate, we saw touristy spots, we met people,
we barely saw the northern lights, we were almost blown over in a windstorm, we relaxed in
different thermal rivers and pools, we were cold, wet and miserable most of the time, and we
had an AMAZING TRIP to Iceland.  Enjoy the pictures!

(Also, we have a link for a map we used that we borrowed off of google from someone else
who roadtripped Iceland in a van for 10 days around the country as well. We hit most of the
same spots, hikes, and campsites as him and he put down many more detours we did not do
too. Please ask us if you want it!)









































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