After staying the evening at Vik, and having a lovely breakfast at the nearby “Skool beans” schoolbus / coffee shop, I noticed something. A few pillars, offshore.
A quick look at Google Maps found what I was looking at, and a quick review of the drive found it to be… surprisingly short!
Hey, what’s the point of doing a van roadtrip if I can’t just randomly see a thing and then drive to see it, right? So, unsurprisingly, I drove over to see what the fuss was about!
When I arrived, I arrived to tour busses. Just… so many tour busses. Which is fine – means I picked a popular spot to sightsee, right? Well… sort of. It was popular, no doubt, but to be frank… the beach itself wasn’t particularly exciting. I think I must have arrived around mid-tide, because there wasn’t really much to see.
I flew my drone, got a simply amazing picture of the sea stacks, and then noticed another interesting ocean formation nearby. Hmm. Maybe I’ll go visit that one next…
I stopped by Seljalandfoss waterfall, because I saw it from the road and it looked pretty.
That simple sentence describes my biggest excitement about doing a #Van_Life roadtrip through Iceland… simply being able to drive, with the spare time to be able to stop at any interesting thing that I see on the side of the road. To move… but still have the free time and leeway to stop and take photos, wander around, and find some neat little unexpected beauty.
Seljalandfoss fit that bill completely.
It’s a huge waterfall, visible from the main road, free-falling into the open air. It’s got a huge cave behind it, allowing me to walk fully around the cascading water, and giving all the beautiful Icelandic waterfall views that one would expect from the infinite number of photos that we’ve all seen.
Equally fun, if not more so, was the smaller falls a bit further along the trail.
Here’s a big tip for any and all other adventurers – when you can, it’s worth it to take the extra time to walk away from the primary attractions and wander down side trails and spurs. Don’t break trail, of course, but… I mean, everyone sees the big attraction, right? And to be fair, it’s usually really cool! But the smaller things, the unexpected little views off to the side… those are a bit less travelled and always feel a bit more impactful to me.
In this case, Gljúfrabúi waterfall was the unexpected little spot off to the side. And, in the humble opinion of this explorer, it was the more exciting of the two!
Granted, Gljúfrabúi isn’t nearly as big as Seljalandfoss. It doesn’t seem to have as much water crashing down, and it’s not a free-fall waterfall, where you can walk fully around the deluge. Instead, it’s in a cave system, fully enclosing the waterfall and giving some staggeringly cool views up into the sky. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves… simple saying that I’m very glad I walked the extra 500m down the cliffside.
Somehow, I don’t think I’ve ever really lived out of a van.
I mean… for most people, that’s kind of normal. But for a guy, into the outdoors, who lived in Oregon and had a good paying job? Well, I always kind of felt like I should be buying a van and working remotely while blogging and Instagramming. Like a nerd. Who blogs these days, right?
When I was planning my trip to Iceland, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do… My friend Bri would be in Iceland the same time I would be, so we’d planned on meeting up at some point – her tentative trip called for a big road trip along the ring road, so renting a car seemed logical to me. When I started looking around, though, I noticed that camper vans weren’t much more expensive than a car rental… and would save me money and chaos on renting hotel or hostel rooms…
I did some digging, looked into options, reserved a van, and my plans were settled.
I had a van, I’d be roadtripping around Iceland, and… well, it was going to be amazing!
The van pickup went easily – the cab to the pickup was a bit insane (thanks, Iceland), but the van pickup itself was simple. I showed up, read my book for a bit, got the van, got a tour of the van, and… suddenly found myself at the helm of a battleship much bigger than I’d expected.
This thing had it all – a bed, a kitchen, a bathroom… fridge, cabinets, everything I could want. I unpacked, put things were they felt like they should go, and suddenly had my moving home ready for an adventure.
My itinerary looked a little something like this:
10-May = Camping near Vik
11-May = Camping at Kirkjubæjarklaustur
12-May = Camping at Kirkjubæjarklaustur
13-May = Camping at Þingvellir (Pronounced Thingvellir)
14-May = Camping at Snorrastadir
15-May = Camping at Reykholar
16-May = Camping at Miðjanes farm
17-May = Camping at Þingvellir again
18-May = Returning the van to its stable
I wasn’t staying at any one spot for too long, but that was totally fine for this adventure – the whole advantage of the van was that I was already unpacked! I didn’t have to stress about making sure I didn’t forget anything… I just kept things where they needed to go, hiked and explored and drove, and let myself float through the adventure.
It was lovely – I heartily recommend IndieCampers to anyone considering this type of exploration through Iceland, and would (and probably will) do it again!
And last, but certainly not least – as is tradition. Food from the adventure! Note that I did cook my own dinner quite a bit in the van – advantage of having the kitchen, which made up for some of the extra costs in gas and eating out other times!
