Iceland, land of fire and ice, well for us it was more winter storm adventure! But let’s start from the beginning, this fun slash adventure storm part will return little lately in this story.
For my dad and me was Iceland always top on the list of countries to visit. What a luck for us, as we have new flight route from Prague, capital city of Czech Republic directly to Iceland. Wait! It’s for November, can we make it on Iceland in winter? Don’t think, we don’t have cold winters in Czech Republic, but yeah, it’s still warmer here in Czech. 🙂 But of course we can make it, it’s going to be great winter Iceland trip. And after all it was really great trip. Stop, no more spoilers, about how great it was. So we are going to Iceland in winter and when we were telling about our upcoming winter adventure to our friends and family, most of them just said something like “enjoy, but don’t freeze there”. 🙂
When we were planning the trip, among other things, we wanted independence. So camper car was the option number one. Not going to speak about experience with Rent.is, as everything went smooth. So we have our small RV car for two booked. Finally it’s late November and we are on Iceland! We are on the way, so we should go straight forward to our trip and continue with the story.
First impression on Iceland? Just look on the picture below, this is really land of fire and ice!
1 – First impression
Plan for first day was very simple. Discover beauties of Snæfellsjökull national park. Something like 250 km in front of us. Just a calm day full of adventures with just a few kilometers to drive. And how is Snæfellsjökull? Beautiful mountains, amazing cliffs, black beaches, small fisherman’s villages and much more, well just everything what you can see on Iceland on one place. You can spend here whole week and still have something new to discover. But that applies for whole Iceland.
2 – Snæfellsjökull National Park
In the late afternoon strong wind came. Well honestly it was windy like hell 🙂 , but we thought it’s just a wind, but the truth is that blizzard was already coming. And how we ended up our first day? We found shelter in beautiful small town Stykkishólmur with glass of traditional Iceland beer.
3 – Wind is coming
Second day is here and the plan is pretty simple. Akureyri, here we go!!! Something like 350km and we can be in the second largest Iceland town. Still windy morning but we saw some Sun coming from East. And there was some Sun, until we reached Staður on Route 1. Somewhere around there Sun just left us and it was no more windy. Because regular winter storm arrived. Just look on the picture of the road to Akureyri.
4 – On the way to Akureyri
We almost didn’t see the road and snow was coming from everywhere. We were almost in the middle of the nowhere. So what to do now? We had only one chance, check the road status regularly and make it to Akureyri. And we did it, well we arrived lately then we expected, but who cares in that weather conditions. It wasn’t easy day, but only easy day was yesterday. After we arrived into Akureyri it was like in a movie. Small beautiful town under the tons of snow. And I’m not kidding now. We just saw the snow and almost nothing else. 🙂
After all, even with blizzard all around us and big driving adventure we enjoyed our day. So we went sleep in our winter shelter car. Let see what new day bring to us, as we had great plans how to continue with our trip on eastern part of Iceland.
And what the new day brought? Winter snow calamity!!! Yes, it was snowing whole night and in the morning there was snow everywhere. We almost couldn’t see our car under the snow. I heard somewhere that winter is coming. Lies, it’s already here on Iceland. 🙂 And what is more important, all the roads from Akureyri were closed. It was Friday and our flight back home was scheduled on Sunday morning. So we are good, at least we have some time to explore Akureyri. We had really lovely day there, like in fairy tale, but in the evening, the town was still cut off from the rest of the world. No road open and no chance to open them today. Well, we still had whole Saturday to get back to Reykjavik and airport. But yeah we checked the air tickets and phone number to Rent.is, you know just to be sure. Maybe we’ll have to have to extend our stay on Iceland. After all, why not, we can’t influence weather and everything else can wait. 🙂
5 – Snow calamity?
6 – Calamity for sure!
There is winter service on road 1!!! We are saved. 🙂 Around 9 AM was road clean and open. We were on way back to Reykjavik. We used the same road, but it was totally different journey this time. No winter storm, so we saw all the beauty around. Snowy mountains, amazing view on fjords around Blönduós and Hvammstangi or just a nature of north Iceland. There are so many nice places to stop, take picture or just chill around.
7 – On the way back
And after all, even the sun returned to Iceland. Even if you are going to ride only road 1, you’ll see all the beauties of Iceland.
8 – Sun is coming back
9 – There is beauty everywhere
Our last stop was Reykjavik, of course we couldn’t miss Iceland’s capital city. Actually it’s really nice city, we spent our very last moments with great food and beer in this beautiful city. And then only last night and flight home, back to Czech Republic.
10 – Winter shelter
11 – Waterfall, how typical for Iceland
And the end just few words about RV car in Iceland, as it is best option for sure. You have all the freedom. You can go and stay wherever you want. Even in the winter you don’t have to worry to camp, look at us, we made even in the winter storm. 🙂 But the truth is, that after all it was more than car. It was our safe harbor, our winter shelter, where we can always hide before the winter and wind. Now I know one thing for sure. This wasn’t our last trip on Iceland!
12 – Sunset
And one more note at the end. Don’t forget to bookmark road.is website. Road condition are almost in real time? I never saw something like that, great job and thumbs up for the Icelandic road and coastal administration. And why am I talking about it? Because Iceland has real wild nature and weather, so stay safe, check the weather and road conditions and enjoy amazing Iceland with Rent.is!
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