Friday, January 10, 2020

Iceland in Winter: Our First Trip to Iceland

We visited Iceland for our first time over the first week of 2020. We arranged this trip to Iceland in the first week of January many months ago. Although it's often recommended that one's first visit to Iceland be during the summer, we chose the winter for the following three reasons:

  1. Northern Lights
  2. Blue Ice Caves
  3. Fewer Fellow Tourists

The most obvious potential drawbacks of visiting Iceland during the winter include the dramatically shorter portions of the days with daylight and colder weather. The biggest drawback we encountered during our visit to Iceland in the winter is the increased variation in weather conditions that force the altering and canceling of one's best-laid plans.

We had pre-arranged several "excursions" or "tours" for our winter week in Iceland. Three of these were canceled altogether and one required some adjustments. Other blogs posts will cover the Iceland tours and excursions we participated in with greater details. The excursions and tours that we either pre-arranged or arranged after something else was canceled are shown below.

  • Snowmobiling Tour on Myrdalsjokull Glacier CANCELED!
    • We arranged this for noon on our first day in Iceland, allowing plenty of time to travel from the Keflavik Airport to Ytri-Sólheimar 1 in Mýrdalur (Road 222 off the Ring Road).
    • Unfortunately, this tour was canceled a couple hours before our scheduled arrival time via an e-mail message with subject "Departure canceled due to weather" and a sentence in the e-mail message's body stating, "Your tour has been cancelled due to weather conditions on the glacier as wind and snow are beginning to pick up, creating a white out conditions."
    • Although this cancellation of our first scheduled activity in Iceland was disappointing, it is better to cancel it in these conditions than to have an issue like this one with another group happen.
    • We used the time that was freed up from this cancellation to visit the town of Vík (the "Southernmost village in Iceland"), to view the Reynisdrangar rock formations from from Vík, and to visit Reynisfjara black sand beach. This blog post provides additional details on these sites.
  • Ice Cave Tour by Vatnajokull Glacier | Departure from Jokulsarlon
  • FlyOver Iceland
  • Gate 1 Travel's Reykjavik City Tour
    • This day in Iceland saw severe winds and blizzard conditions throughout southern Iceland. Because our tour today was scheduled for in the city of Reykjavik itself, our tour was one of the very few that was not canceled due to weather. Our tour guide and bus driver agreed to do one portion of this city tour (visiting the Perlan Museum observation deck) on the next day because the view from the Perlan would not be too great during a blizzard.
    • This blog post delves into greater details regarding the Reykjavik City Tour.
  • Blue Lagoon Experience Comfort
    • See this blog post for greater details regarding visiting the Blue Lagoon.
  • Gate 1 Travel's Golden Circle Tour
    • See the blog post that covers in more detail the beautiful and interesting sites on this tour.
  • South Shore Adventure CANCELED!
    • We were disappointed when most tours, including ours, was canceled on this day with more snow, severe wind gusts, and closed roads.
    • We were happy that we had seen Vík, Reynisdrangar, and Reynisfjara on our first day in Iceland when our snowmobile excursion was canceled because these were part of the South Shore Adventure tour that was canceled a few days later. We saw the waterfalls Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss from the Ring Road on that same day, but would have stopped at them had we known the South Shore Adventure would be canceled a few days later. We also would have stopped at Dyrhólaey on that first day had we known that our scheduled South Shore Adventure would be canceled.
    • When we learned of the cancellation of the South Shore Adventure, we made reservations to participate in The Lava Tunnel tour, which is discussed in this blog post.
  • Gate 1 Travel's Northern Lights Tour
    • We had learned at Aurora Reykjavik: The Northern Lights Center and at the Perlan that there are numerous factors that go into seeing the northern lights. The inclement weather of our week in Iceland severely impacted the ability to see the northern lights.
    • We finally had an evening in which we went out to see the northern lights, but even on that relatively good weather night, there were two many clouds in the sky to have any realistic chance of seeing the northern lights.
  • Reykjavik to Keflavik Airport | Sightseeing Reykjanes Before Departure CANCELED!
    • We had a relatively late flight departure time and looked forward to squeezing in a little more sightseeing before leaving Iceland. Unfortunately, this tour that stopped at key sites along the Reykjanes peninsula on the way to Keflavik Airport was canceled due to weather.
    • We scheduled a transport to the airport via FlyBus for later in the day and then used the extra time now available to us to walk around downtown Reykjavik a bit and to visit a couple museums including the Whales of Iceland Museum.

The point of listing the pre-arranged activities and excursions above was to emphasize the potential impact to the best-laid plans that might occur when traveling to Iceland in winter. You have to be prepared to adapt and adjust your plans as the Iceland winter weather dictates.

The following blog posts provide details for other aspects of our winter week in Iceland. Topics covered will include renting a vehicle and driving in Iceland, dining in Iceland, lodging in Iceland, and highlighting the attractions and sites that we visited.

Our winter week in Iceland was fascinating. We learned many new things and saw many beautiful sites. Some things did not go as planned and there were some disappointments (canceled tours and not seeing the northern lights), but there were also some nice surprises that rose from the disappointments and it was a very rewarding trip overall. We were able to accomplish two of our three primary objectives for going to Iceland in the winter: we were able to see the blue (and black) ice caves and we were able to enjoy the sites and attractions with fewer fellow tourists.

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