6 Days in an Icelandic Winter Wonderland

While scanning through youtube and pinterest, I fell in love with the breathtaking photos of auroras and ice caves. I knew we had to visit! I had been pressuring my partner the past 2 years, and he finally caved to my wanderlust for a frozen wonderland. We enjoyed 6 days of ice covered dreams. So what can you do in less than a week in Iceland in the winter? Turns out you can do a lot, it just may not be what you initially intended. Mother nature up there is fierce!

​Our first night in Reykjavic we were too tired to do much from the long travels, so we just enjoyed our spaceship experience at Galaxy Pod Hostel. We slept in a futuristic looking pod like something out of aliens that was lit with bluish-purple lighting.

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We started our adventure on Day 2 visiting the legendary Blue Lagoon spa. I didn't know this, but it's actually a pretty high tech spa and not just a body of water. We waited in the long line at sunrise for out 9am entry. It was damn cold, but the water was like a luxurious bath in the most beautiful blue water you could imagine surrounded by steam, snow, and mountains. We ended up experiencing hail, rain, and snow while we were there so it created quite a contrast of experience. The place was huge! There was also a waterfall massage, steam room, steam cave, sauna, café, and bar in the water. We stayed for 4 hours we loved it so much. The silica mask that you frequently see people wearing in pics was free and made your skin super smooth. The locker room was a bit weird since it was like a high school locker room changing area...not for the modest. They do have some private changing areas too. You are asked to shower before entering the lagoon. They provide conditioner to try to protect your hair, but if I were to do it over again I would never have let my hair touch the water. Even though I tied it up most the time, it felt like straw for weeks. It took a boatload of coconut oils and special conditioners to restore my hair. Don't let that deter you though, it is worth it.

We left the lagoon and tried to hit ring road to discover it was closed, along with all the other roads due to an incoming blizzard. We spent the next couple days exploring Reykjavic in a blizzard instead which consisted of : Visiting a penis museum (yes, it's as weird as it sounds), seeing the Sun Voyager sculpture, local murals, Hallgrimur (the space shuttle church), shopping along Laugavegur Road and trying out the local cafes and restaurants (Chuck Norris Grill, a pizza place, and Joe and the Juice), Harpa concert hall, and visiting Perlan for the lovely night view. We laughed at all the other stranded tourists flocking to the same places. The wind was blowing so hard we could barely stand in some places. I convinced Chris to climb a snowy hill with me for a photo and we were in hysterics trying to remain standing amidst the blowing snow and blustery winds. You can see us laughing in the photo below.

Since we were snowed in, we decided to take advantage of the Viking experience by getting Viking portraits done at Mink Studio. The photographer Gustavo was so friendly and made the experience a ton of fun. Even though we have been together for nearly 2 decades, this was the first professional portraits we had ever taken together. This by far was better than any of the corny shots you see people post on fb, and was weird just like us!

Day 4: Finally, the blizzard stopped so we got up at 5 am to start driving toward Jokulsarlon in hopes of being able to make our ice cave tour. We needed to do some rearranging, but we managed to get there by noon. Since the road closings had not been updated overnight, it still looked like the roads were closed and no one else was out yet.  Even though we were not able to explore ring road, we managed to get an ice cave tour with GoEcco  all by ourselves. Despite there being 26 tour operators, we were still practically the only ones in the cave, a pretty rare experience from what we understand. We explored the crystal cave with its amazing blue canopy before heading out on a glacier hike. We wore these lovely crampons (spikes that attach to your shoes) and began our march. It was fascinating to look down at all the layers in the ice. We stopped on part of the glacier where a Moulin was nestled into the ice. This was basically like huge platforms of ice with cutouts from the wind. It was so cold and exhausting for our out of shape selves, but pretty magical. Chris went into shock from the cold and we had to stop for a bit while I tried to warm him up. He was pretty miserable for about 15 minutes, but everything turned out ok in the end.

My next task was to convince Chris to explore Diamond beach, which incidentally was right across the street from our tour meetup point by glacier lagoon. It was so worth it as you can see. The beach was covered with these blocks of blue melted glacier pieces (sad really). We spotted seals swimming in the water nearby. It was magical.

 After that we headed toward Hofn to our guesthouse. The drive was stunning with long roads surrounded by icy mountainous landscapes with flowing streams of water slicing a path through the ice. When we arrived at our guest house, we were told it was Cake Day (how cool is that?) in Iceland and were given a homemade cream puff. The guest house experience was new to us. It's sort of like a cross between a hotel, a hostel, and a BnB. You get your own room, but have shared communal space. The owner lives off site and comes over to give you keys, a tour, and cleans.  We stayed at Hofn guesthouse and the proprieter was super friendly and gave us tips to locate the nearby Viking Village. Unfortunately, another blizzard rolled in and we were stranded the rest of the night. This also meant that there was once again no chance of catching an aurora due to cloud cover. Instead, we visited a local restaurant overlooking a fishing dock. It was a nice, classy lodge-like atmosphere. The menu was filled with seafood. There were a few Asian tourists there with us, but it was mostly empty. We dined and then headed back to our guesthouse.

  Day 5 started out in Hofn where the weather seemed ok, but just a few miles down the road we realized that our plans needed to change fast. We were headed toward Viking Village and turned down a small road on a high embankment near the water. The road was not plowed. We crept to a stop when the wind suddenly started blowing the 4x4 several feet across the road. Holy shit! We immediately put the car in reverse and headed back to the main road. The weather was getting worse and we were afraid to drive the couple miles back to the guesthouse so we sought refuge at a nearby Foss hotel until the weather cleared. Interestingly enough, the road map did not reflect the closures until after all this occurred. We waited the storm out, had lunch at a nearby café /gas station/gift shop with locals and were offered a buffet for "Plump Day," which we later realized was Fat Tuesday. Chris enjoyed his meal while I ate a cookie. We were certainly the only tourists, and it was quaint. After a few hours we gave it another try and headed to Viking Village. We were amazed to see all the wild reindeer just roaming about. We stopped and just watched them graze a few feet from our car before continuing on.

We bought our tickets from the Viking café and then walked the 3/4 mile to the village through the thick snow. As we approached we discovered this group of wild Icelandic horses just standing around. We approached them slowly and a curious horse approached us. We were instant friends. Pretty soon we were surrounded by horses wanting attention and probably food, but we had none to offer. One even insisted on a selfie!

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We parted ways with the horses and headed on to the village. Our understanding was that it was built for a movie set and then left abandoned. It looked straight out of Vikings.

 We left the village, hung out with the horses again before giving them a parting hug and headed out toward the nearby lighthouse as the café worker suggested. The light house did not appear accessible, so we walked up the cliff side to take a view of the shoreline and discovered one of the most picturesque scenes we could have ever imagined. See for yourself.

We spotted several photographers setting up tripods nearby, but I think they missed the best view. After that we started our journey back to Reykjavic. We searched the sky for auroras as the landscape got dark, but could only see shadows of mountains. Off to the side of the road I spotted a frozen waterfall lit up in the darkness. We decided to try to find our way back to it which resulted in us getting stuck in a snowbank that I was thankfully able to push us out of. Somehow we managed to find our way to the falls. It was such an amazing contrast to see the darkness, stars, and half frozen falls. We noticed a tour group staring at the sky.  They confirmed the greyish looking clouds was actually the northern lights. Despite the low KP index, you could still see the lights. By now my camera batteries were all dead and I lost my charger, but I discovered if you pulled the battery out and put it back in you could get a few pics before it died again. I hastily set up my camera and tripod amidst the blowing cold wind and managed to take a couple shots. Surprisingly, my camera could pick up the coloring more than our eyes could. I was disappointed I could not get the ideal shot, but was so excited to see the lights on our final night!

We left the lights after my battery gave its final hurrah and headed to our guesthouse in Reykjakic. We had a few hours to kill on our final day so we headed back to explore the city when we discovered that it was another special day in Iceland, much like Halloween. Kids were dressed up in costumes and ran gleefully from store to store asking for candy and singing songs in return. We followed a few groups of kids just to hear them sing. While we ate the much talked about hot dogs from Olsen Olsen, we were serenaded by a parade of adorable kids. 

After that, we drove around and returned our rental car, amazingly still in one piece.  After 14 days of vacationing, 9 planes, 5 countries, we were ready  to go home and cuddle our cats. We said farewell to Iceland, but not for good. Next time we hope to see the ring road in springtime.
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