Unexpected Iceland: The Worst and Best Ways to See Iceland

To be honest, the last day of my stay in Iceland was the best one - and also the one which finally made me believe that it's indeed an amazingly beautiful country, which I had doubted in the previous days due to terrible weather. But before discovering the true beauty of Iceland, we had to go through one of the biggest touristic disasters in my life :D

One evening we decided to go on an organised tour called "Northern Lights Mystery". I'm not at all fond of any kinds of organised tourism, but in Iceland you don't have much choice, because you can't really rely on the public buses, which can only take you to some towns, but not to the most beautiful places. So either you have/rent a car, or you go on such an organised tour. I felt a bit sceptical, but decided to give it a try. We were in a big bus full of foreign tourists with a guide who was talking nonsense (Icelandic is very similar to English? Oh really?...), but it all wouldn't have been that bad, if there hadn't been more than 10 buses going all together to one parking some 50 km out of Reykjavík. I bet there must be more parkings in the middle of nowhere in a country like Iceland, but apparently they believe that tourists enjoy traveling in a huge crowd. Well, maybe some of them do, but I definitely don't... So the whole crowd was standing on the parking in freezing wind trying to see something on the sky ;) There was something slightly green and let's believe that those were indeed the Northern Lights and not some unusual cloud. But it didn't look like what you can see on postcards at all. Of course, they always warn the tourists that there's no guarantee of seeing the Lights, so it's not their fault. But the whole thing looked quite ridiculous... ;) Then we were taken to the nearest village and told that we might buy some hot drinks... But then imagine people from all those buses rushing to that local shop/café :D We just stayed in the bus. Later we went to one more parking to hunt the Northern Lights, but both me and Søren were asleep, so we're not even quite sure how many stops there were afterwards :D

The next day we were supposed to go on a similat trip to see the Gullfoss waterfall, but you can imagine how I felt about the idea... Fortunately, we found a better solution: to rent a car! It's really great that, unlike me, Søren can drive a car :)

Yes, there are mountains!

We took the Ring Road towards Selfoss and then I could see it clearly that there actually were some mountains. :) The landscapes were so wonderful that I've taken a lot of photos from the car, which I actually never do, as I find it quite silly. But finally I could see what Iceland is really like - outside of the capital city and without rain! Everything was just white and blue. Only from time to time we could see some tiny villages.

On the way to Geysir

After driving for some 50 kms on the Ring Road, we had to take road 35, which actually leads into the interior of Iceland, but is easily accessible only until Gullfoss, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions. Fortunately, it was already afternoon, so we couldn't see a lot of tourists buses on the way ;) (Yes, now I'm very prejudiced towards organised tourism in Iceland). After one more hour of driving we reached our first destination...

in Geysir

It was Geysir, which is famous for geysers, as you may have guessed ;) The original Great Geysir, which gave the name to periodically spouting hot springs, isn't really active anymore, but in the past it could hurl water for up to 70-80 meters in the air! Nowadays the most active one is Strokkur, which hurls water for 30 meters "only" and errupts every several minutes, but that was enough for me to freak out... It's so easy to scare me, you know :D And yes, now I can perfectly understand why the hot water in Iceland smells so bad. It smells of geysers! :P It's not the lovliest smell ever, but it's certainly worth coming there to see this natural phenomenon.

I was afraid this one would errupt too :D

It was already sunset, but we decided to go to Gullfoss, which is located just 10 km away from Geysir nevertheless. It was almost completely dark when we came there, but it added some mysterious feeling to the process of visiting the great waterfall. First we could only hear it, but not see it :) We walked down the stairs, I fell on the snow while trying to take pictures, and then finally we could see Gullfoss. If you use your imagination, maybe you can also see the waterfall on the next picture! :D

This wonderful quality!

Of course, I wish I could see it in daylight too, but I was glad to come there when nobody else was around, it's so much easier to enjoy the amazing nature this way. Then it was time to drive back to Reykjavík. Actually, on the way back we've seen much more Northern Lights than during that lame tour! they still didn't look the way they do on postcards, but this time I had no doubts that that was it. The only sad thing was that the next morning I already had to fly back to Poland through Denmark and Sweden... Just hours after starting to discover the real beauty of Iceland. But who knows, maybe I'd have a chance to come there again and see more? A month ago the idea of traveling to Iceland sounded too unrealistic to me, but yet it happened in the most unexpected way. And if you've done something once, you can also do it twice, it's the first time which is always the hardest :) I'd love to see more of the Icelandic nature. Still, I think it's a pity they don't have railways and I believe they should certainly build some, but I doubt Icelandic president and prime minister will listen to me ;) It's a country, where almost everyone is used to having a car and so maybe they don't feel the need to have trains... But trainless life is very sad, isn't it? In any case, Iceland is definitely a country, which is worth visiting, even if I had doubts in the first days of my stay there. I'm really thankful to Søren for making this whole journey possible and I hope we'll meet again... in whichever country!