A Few Things You Should Bring On Your Road Trip Through Iceland
A Few Iceland Travel Tips and Things to Bring
There are so many ways to travel beautiful Iceland. You can take tours on buses, go camping, a road trip, or for the hardcore, there are multi-day remote hiking sites you could do!
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Having travelled Iceland by car for almost 2 full weeks, there was a handful of items I wish I had brought. You may not run into these problems if you are doing bus tours or remote camping. But for road trip style adventures these are some of the things I wish I had brought.
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1. Travel Thermos + Box Of Teabags
(For cold weather travel – Autumn through to Spring)
We were halfway on this one; we had the tea bags but no thermos! All the accommodations we had stayed at carried a kettle so it would have been nice to make some on-the-go tea early in the morning. A lot of days were pretty cold/rainy and after a full day of hiking, it would have been nice to have had easy access to a warm cup of tea. I’m a fan of the Organic Art of Tea teabags. Likewise, there are plenty of little cafes around and off of the ring road, but If you are busy travelling and on the go, it takes up too much time sitting down for every meal or tea/coffee.
2. Waterproof Pants + Jacket
Once again, I was half-way on this once. I have an amazing Marmot waterproof Gortex jacket but not the matching pants (though I wish I did). Travelling thus far, it was the first country I felt I ever really ever needed a pair. Iceland is the second windiest country in the world (fun fact!). When the rain comes, the wind usually follows and it’s not unusual to see the rain droplets travelling horizontally. Do not bother with an umbrella, it will not survive, it’s way too windy for it here. Aside from the weather, waterproof pants would have been really useful while exploring some of the bigger waterfalls. You’ll be surprised how soaked from the mist you can get.
3. Get A Good Detailed Map
Phone signal and data is very spotty around the country regardless of phone carrier
Although we had an Icelandic sim card/phone plan (I’d recommend Nova), online maps and data were sometimes very spotty and unreliable. The roads can change yearly depending on weather, volcanoes and flooding. I usually purchase a map on the first day in the country but I couldn’t find one I liked (it was a little tough to find one, to begin with). Look for the most recent updated one and purchase ahead if you can. A map that’s even three years old will already have different roads and paths, due to this countries everchanging landscape. It saves you from having Google tell you to turn LEFT (into a river) on a road that no longer exists (true story).
4. Fork + Knife + Spoon Set
If you are buying groceries while travelling
It may be surprising, but it’s really hard finding plastic cutlery to use with food on the go. We checked a few stores and couldn’t find anything. Because we were on the road a great deal of time, we would purchase groceries often and soon we had some challenges when we realized we could not find a knife to put jam on bread (nonetheless we got creative and innovative without cutlery). Be nature conscious and consider a compostable set like this one. I wish we had brought our camping cutlery set, but seeing as we weren’t gonna be doing any remote camping we, unfortunately, and mindlessly excluded it from our packing list (oops!).
5. Bring An Extra Microfiber Towel Per Person
Two Towels Per Person
After enjoying some remote hot springs throughout the country; the last thing you want is to get muddy using the same towel for your feet and your body. Most of the remote hot springs are not built up, so be prepared for your feet to possibly get muddy. Some of the more accessible hot springs have a stone path or grass along the periphery, so it won’t be muddy at all the locations. Get a pair of some nice microfiber towels to take along with you in case you need them! It is a little hard to judge when you are hunting for hot pots (the locals don’t call them hot springs). We ran into both scenarios; my recommendation is to go prepared.
6. Bring Waterproof Flip-flops
(Plastic flip-flops)
The flip-flops will be dual purpose (talk about killing two birds with one stone!). Some hiking trails have rivers you will have to cross with knee-high deep water if you want to continue on. If you can tolerate trekking through the, more often than not, glacier cold water then bring the old’ rubber flip-flops. It’s easier than lugging the extra ‘proper’ gear around (it’s cold water but survivable) (yet another use for that Microfiber towel you should bring!). Dually, the flip-flops are fairly useful when visiting hot springs (either in built up or remote locations). For reasons mentioned in the previous section; mud and easy cleaning. And lastly, for the photographer’s out there, it’s worth climbing into that cold stream or river for that perfect scenic picture.
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