Iceland: What We'd Change (2017)

Timing:  While I think both of us would probably say that mid-late May was actually the perfect time to take our trip, if for no other reason than for the very small number of other people we encountered, there were things that made it a little more difficult.  A lot of the Camping Card sites actually opened for the season the day we got there, but there were even more of them that hadn’t opened yet.  That meant that there were some days that we had no other option than to go significantly out of our way to get to a campsite that we had basically already paid for.  The other downside to going when we went was that despite the Aurora forecast saying it was good several nights, the sun never actually set so there was essentially zero chance of seeing the Northern Lights (peak season is from September to April).

Things we didn’t do: Beside just walking around Reykjavik for a few hours, the only thing we really did while in the city was a little bit of shopping and visiting Hallsgrímskirkja – you can do whale/puffin watching out of Reykjavik, but we knew we were going to Husavik later, so didn’t look into that very long.  There’s a boat ride that takes you to the northern-most island of Iceland called Grimsey, which offers hiking trails and bird watching if you’re up for that.  Vatnshellir cave is an option if you wanted to do a guided underground cave tour, but it’s also at the endpoint of one of the fjords so would also be quite the drive.  There’s a river rafting company called Bakkaflöt between Akureryi and Hvammstangi that I think would have been very fun to do. 

Long drives during our last days:  Because of the way the road tracks in and out along the fjords when you get to the northern part of Iceland, it makes drives far longer than they seem like they should be.  Partially because a lot of the campsites weren’t open yet, and partially because there wasn’t much to do on our list, we ended up with a few days of really long drives (like 8 hours long).  While Dynjandi was a really cool waterfall to see, it still involves a long trek into the western fjords and back out again.  It’s probably worth it to see the waterfall, but for as interesting of a fact as it becomes to be able to say you’ve stood on the western-most part of Europe, it really wasn’t that impressive, and we would probably scrap that drive if we had to do it again.  There’s a lot of hiking options in the central-to-north area of the country that we could have broken some of the drives up with as well. 

Overall though, I think mid-May was the perfect time to go.  We lucked out with weather and avoided crowds.  If we were to go again, I think it would be a shorter trip during the winter centered around Reykjavik and the Golden Circle, just to see some of the larger waterfalls in the snow and ice, and to really get our chance at seeing the Northern Lights.