Plan your own tripTravel Log
by Vandra QuestPicked up the 4x4 at Keflavík and drove into Reykjavík with the sun refusing to properly set. April here is all in-between — snow still on the high ground, but the days already stretching. Checked in, bought supplies, slept badly out of excitement.
The Blue Lagoon is touristy and I'd do it again tomorrow. Milky blue water, black rock all around, cold air on your face and heat everywhere else. Floated with a silica mask on for an hour and stopped having opinions about anything.
Two hours of standing in a field being cold and doubtful. Then a faint grey smear turned green, and within a minute it was moving — actually moving, like it was being poured across the sky. Nobody in the group said a word for a solid few minutes.
Þingvellir first — standing in the rift between two continents, which is a sentence that doesn't get less strange. Then Geysir doing its thing every few minutes, then Gullfoss, which throws so much spray you're wet before you reach the viewpoint.
You can walk the whole way behind Seljalandsfoss, which mostly means getting comprehensively drenched while grinning. Skógafoss is the bigger one — 60 metres, straight down, and a staircase up the side that made the case for fewer pastries.
Reynisfjara is basalt columns, black sand, and sneaker waves that genuinely kill people — the signs are not decorative and we stayed well up the beach. Grey day, grey sea, black ground. Bleakest and best thing I've looked at in a long time.