Funny story.

My wife and I planned our Las Vegas wedding in about a weekend. Really. And not because it had been our intention to run off to Vegas to get hitched. We'd been planning to go there for a one-week vacation, as we had done several times prior. But then friends and family started questioning our intentions, as if we were actually the type to elope. There was nothing particularly special about this trip: hang around town, take a daytrip to Death Valley, maybe visit the Valley of Fire and enjoy the Vegas sun while everyone else was freezing back home on the East Coast in mid February. But then we looked into it. The opportunity presented itself and we decided, “why not?” Cue the mad scramble to arrange travel and accommodations for the family members who would join us in this super-impromptu wedding ceremony. In the end, it ended up being a wedding and mini-moon all in one.

So when, several months later, still undecided on a honeymoon destination, I was scrolling Instagram and becoming rapidly obsessed with the idea of going to Iceland. I wasn't sure how that idea was going to pan out. I mean, who goes to a frigid landscape on honeymoon? Aren't we supposed to be sitting on a tropical beach, knocking back coladas while rocking oversized sunglasses, and never enough sunscreen?

Fast-forward to May 2018. I'm a bundle of excitement. Think child on Christmas morning kind of excited. That first glimpse of moss-covered lava fields from the air, the first step outside into an admittedly grey and entirely Icelandic morning.

"Welcome to Icelandic summer!" was the first thing our rental car agent told us. I thought he was kidding.

My wife was questioning all her life choices. This is, I think, when she realized she had married a traveler, not a tourist.

Oops.

That first trip wasn’t long. 6 days in Iceland followed by another 6 days in London—call it a compromise. With only 6 days and being unfamiliar with the exact scope of drives and unpredictable Icelandic weather, our plans were fairly straight forward.

We rented a gorgeous Airbnb just outside Reykjavik and did several day trips during our stay. For the record, that was a mistake. Unless you’re staying put in Reykjavik or taking bus tours, having a home base in the city simply isn’t an effective use of your time.

Day trips in Iceland

Several days into the trip, we set out to visit Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, and hit atrocious weather. I’m talking gale force winds, constant rain, even some hail for the entire 10 hours of the drive. Needless to say, we didn’t do any sightseeing along that route. We did however make it to Jökulsárlón, and despite the weather, got out, took some photos, and made the best of it. Thankfully, I did book us a cabin out in Kirkjubaejarklaustur (about 45 minutes east of Vik) for the night. But that meant we now had to backtrack through the storm. I lost count of how many times I fueled up that day.

I may have questioned my own life choices once or twice along that drive.

I do all the driving on our trips. I love driving. (Unless I’m stuck in traffic going across the GW Bridge heading to New York, in which case, I can’t stand driving and wish someone had invented teleportation by now.) But even I had to admit that we’d just had a monumentally lackluster experience. Not to mention, my poor wife had a full blown cold by this point, making it an extra miserable time. When I booked our cabin, I had every intention of sitting on the porch with some hot coffee that night and enjoying the sweeping Icelandic views. Instead we stumbled inside, cold, soggy, hungry and exhausted from our day on the road.

I credit the following day for completely turning the trip around.

Sólheimasandur DC Plane Wreck
*May 2018 by Ana Santos*

Chasing waterfalls

We woke up to sunshine, a clear sky and incredible views that went on seemingly forever. In May, the days are long. Not quite white nights long, but long enough to be able to push how much can be done in one day. Having just lost the previous day, we made the decision to backtrack to Skaftafell, do the hike up to Svartifoss and then hit every spot we had wanted to see along the South Coast. All in one day. That included Vik, the DC plane wreck, Skógafoss, and Seljalandsfoss waterfalls. To say it was an ambitious plan is putting it mildly.

By the time we were standing in Gljúfrabúi (the gorgeous cave waterfall near Seljalandfoss) at 11:30pm, it felt like the previous day was just a faint hallucination. The 1.5 hour drive to Reykjavik didn’t even feel so bad after that. Suddenly, we were both exhilarated. Soaked to the bone, but exhilarated.

Have you ever stood close to a waterfall? It’s incredible.

Walking behind Seljalandsfoss is a wild experience. However, standing in a tiny cave in the middle of the longest sunset you’ve ever seen, getting downright bathed by a glacial water, after having just sloshed through a creek to get there is downright life-changing.

After that magical time on the South Coast, the trip was over too soon. We definitely didn’t see as much as I had hoped to, but deep down, I think I was ok with that. I knew I wanted to go back. I couldn’t not go back—there was still way too much to explore.

In early 2020, the band Explosions in the Sky announced an August show at Reykjavik’s Harpa center. This was it! This was my chance! We booked a four day weekend trip that coincided with my wife’s birthday. It’s a only a short 5-hour flight from New Jersey, we could go to the show, visit some of the falls, bask in the midnight sun and be back in time for work Monday morning.

But… we all know how 2020 turned out.

Planning the Ring Road trip

Despite the initial disappointment, that cancellation ultimately led me to plan out what would later turn into one of our favorite trips to date: two full weeks, full circle around the Ring Road, the opportunity to explore and see things I’d been adding to my “must see & do” list for the past four years. It was a long list.

I don’t quite remember what I said to convince my wife to return to Iceland with me, this time for much longer. But she was on board. In fact, I clearly remember her telling me “this is your baby, plan at will and just tell me where to be.” You see, it started as a one week trip, and then it grew to a week and a half. But I really, really wanted to make the trip out to Stuðlagil and since we were going all the way out there, we might as well go all the way around.

Given the greenlight to plan at will, I was determined to make this trip as memorable as possible. So I pulled out all the stops—hours of research went into this itinerary, figuring out driving distances, new stops, new sites, where to stay, where to eat and how much we could feasibly fit into one day. I had to find the hidden gems, the key photography spots, the shortcuts, the tips and the tricks. It was an ambitious road trip that would cover a lot of ground. A lot.

About a month before we got on the plane, I joined Fora. By then, they already had a growing waitlist of prospective advisors, but something I said in my application made them take a chance on me and I was onboarded in time for our trip. What started as yet another vacation became a content creation trip, and also a bit of a trial, really.

We’d road-tripped in Oregon in the summer of 2019, but not nearly on the scale that we were about to do it. The way I figured it, if I could pull this off using myself as the guinea pig, I could pull anything off.

I’m happy to report that I did, in fact, pull it off.

But you probably already knew that. Not only was the trip not a bust, it was just the thing that made my wife fall completely in love with Iceland. Yes!

Have you ever sat a friend down to show them a movie or band you really like? All the while you’re nervously chewing off every last fingernail you managed to grow over the last month, and the butterflies in your stomach are bouncing around like the most animated mosh-pit you’ve ever seen. But then your friend turns to you with wonder in their eyes and tell you they love it. They abso-freakin’-love it.

It was like that. There may have been some moments of watery eyes.

That is not to say that the trip was 100% flawless.

We still haven’t crossed everything off my “must see & do” list. Someone may have dropped a brand new phone in a toilet. Someone else might have soaked and subsequently shorted out her Nikon camera about 4 days into a 14 day trip. (The phone survived. I don’t want to talk about the camera.) Ok, so I also didn’t get to photograph puffins, which was the sole reason I over-packed my gear and nearly broke my back carrying it all onto the plane. But in the grand scheme of things, that was minor. Because the experience? That was flawless.

Summer in Iceland truly does hit different

We landed in late June 2022, just a few days after the summer solstice, which gave us two full weeks of incredible white nights. The endless daylight hours gave us the chance to sleep in a bit in the mornings, and be out well past what’s considered a reasonable hour in the evenings. But when the sun doesn’t set, the lupines are in full bloom and 2am feels like 7pm, what’s the difference?

Are there things I would do differently? Absolutely. And with each subsequent trip I’ve since planned and booked for clients, I’ve been making those adjustments.

We didn’t spend nearly enough time in the North. I would have loved a chance to explore Akureyri (Iceland’s capital in the North), rather than to simply spend the night, and definitely should have given us more time to see more of Mývatn. It’s easy to spend at least 3-4 days between both regions, and next time that is exactly what we plan on doing.

I booked us our two final nights in Reykjavik. While I do enjoy the city and we spent plenty of time walking around, doing some shopping, and drinking all of the coffee we possibly could muster, accommodations outside the city would have been preferable after spending such a long time traveling the countryside. Luckily, I did manage to find us last minute accommodations for the final night in a tiny little town on Reykjanes Peninsula. It was quiet, it had views and it was perfect.

Icelandic activities

Our only activity was a 3 hour small group glacier walk with Melrakki Adventures. It was phenomenal. Muscles hurt that I didn’t even know I had but the sheer experience of walking on a glacier is something I’d recommend to anyone traveling to Iceland. We’ve always been very much the DIY kind of travelers with a free schedule unconstrained by booked tours or activities, but this experience made us realize that sometimes, including some activities isn’t so bad.

On the next go, we’re looking at snorkeling or scuba diving between the teutonic plates at Silfra, and taking a ride through lava fields and black sand beaches on an ATV.

So that “must do & see” list? Far from complete, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

You see, it’s one thing to plan a road-trip from the comfort of your couch, allowing Google Maps to best estimate your driving times. It’s another thing to be faced with poor weather and dirt roads with craters the size of small moons. You know what you get when poor weather meets dirt road? Mud. A lot of freakin’ mud. I apologized to our trusty KIA crossover a few times on that trip. Google Maps can only estimate so far, the reality will always surprise you which is why I always tell my clients that the number one rule in Iceland is - be flexible. There will always be more than anyone can possibly see in one trip on the itinerary. Pick and choose what’s possible for you depending on how you’re feeling, how the weather is treating you and how far you’re willing to drive.

The beauty about being flexible with your itinerary is that you give yourself the chance to make time for the locations you really want to spend the most time at. For example, knew we’d wanted to spend a couple of hours at Stuðlagil, and because the drives are fairly long in the East, that was our main activity that day. We popped over to Seydisfjordur for dinner after a white-knuckling drive through heavy fog on Route 93, and made it to our accommodations in Djúpivogur around 11pm. We missed hiking Hengifoss, checking out Gufu and soaking at Vok Baths. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just another incentive to go back.

Looking back, last year’s vacation was so much more than a content creation trip.

What you get when you book your Iceland trip with me

Each stop was a learning experience—which roads to take and which to avoid, what parking lots to set the GPS for, and what directions to ignore. I can tell you the best route to reach the Arctic Henge, how to avoid Iceland’s only toll, where to park in Reykjavik, the best path to reach Stuðlagil and what’s the best time to see popular waterfalls and avoid the crowds.

Want to know which hot springs to visit on your trip? I’ll rattle them off according to your route and give you the pros and cons for each. Want to mix up 3 and 4 star hotels so you have the chance to pamper yourself in between hikes? Not only have I got you, I can probably tack on some extra perks for you at a number of properties. That little super power is in part my affiliation with Fora, in part my obsessive passion to reach out to the hotels, make connections and keep sending clients back.

When I decided to embark on this venture as a travel advisor, I honestly didn’t set out to make Iceland one of my main niches, but so here for it.

If you reach out for help with an Iceland trip (or any other trip to anywhere else), know that you’re going to get 120% enthusiasm and several years worth of research, client feedback and personal experience.

And speaking of personal experience—we’ve got our sights on the Westfjords. You know it’s just a matter of time before I go down that particular rabbit hole.

Unless the ground starts rumbling and a volcano erupts before then. We missed the last two volcanic erruptions, one during the pandemic and the most recent because we had just come back from our summer trip. We’ve vowed to buy a plane ticket next time it happens, so that we can cross that particular item off our bucketlist.

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