Three years late
Our original plan was to visit Iceland in July/August 2019. Flight tickets were bought and accommodations were booked. Unfortunately in Feb/Mar 2019, Covid 19 was official annouced as a pandemic by WHO. Singapore border s were closed, tourists were not allowed in and citizens were not allowed out for “non emergency” reasons.
We cancelled our flights and got back our refund. We cancelled our accommodation bookings without much problem. Unfortunately 3 nights of stay in Iceland were non refundable. Two of the nights were at “The Barn” in Viks and we were promised two night free stay with non expiry date. The other non-refundable one night was a Reykjavid, the host too promised a free stay that was within a year. Covid 19 lasted for more than a year and by the time we were ready to visit Iceland the hotel for our one night stay in Reykjavik had a change in ownership and would not honour a free night stay.
Singapore to Iceland
It was a three legs flight from Singapore to Iceland. Our first stop was a three hours transit at Doha and the second stop was another three hours transit in Copenhagen. Every transit gave us the chance to stretch our legs, do some shopping, have coffee, cakes and meals. It was a long 26 hours to reach Iceland!
Erupting Volcano
Just as we were about to reach Iceland we eagerly looked of our plane window and we spotted IT! On July 10, six days before we flew into Iceland, an eruption began within the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system, with a 900 metre long fissure opening up. This was 11 months after the last eruption.
We saw a long trial of heavy smoke coming off a location on the black ground. We did not see any red lava flow or hint of fire. We had read about organised trips to view the lava flow and were definitely excited to join a trip and view the eruption/lava flow close up. Unfortunately Iceland authority had temporary close trip to the eruption till the situation stablised and safe for visitors.
Keflavik Airport
We reached Keflavik Internatonal Airport at about 6.30pm. The sky was bright, blue very lovely and very promising. We had plan that included: to pick up datacard, to get our rental car and a visit to the Blue Lagoon before end of the day.
Getting our data card at the airport
Between the two of us we had already bought and received a 14GB vodafone data card before leaving Singapore. The second data card (5GB), a Siminn Card, was bought it in Keflavik airport at a convenience store in the arrival hall before we crossed security. The price for the voldafone card was SGD17 and the Siminn card was 1000ISK.
Picking up our rental car
We rented our car form Blue Rental Car. Before selecting Blue we had evaluated various car rental companies in Iceland. Several which had bad reviews were already sieved out. It was down to Blue or Lotus Car Rental. They were two of the most expensive car rental companies in Iceland but had great reviews.
We chose a small automatic car from Blue and added protection like 0.00 ISK liability, sand and ash protection, two drivers etc. The cost came up to 536924ISK when the car was booked in Jan 2023 ( 6 months before arrival). We made the booking as we saw the car rental cost rising through the months. After the booking to June 2023 we continued to monitor the car pricing and the first time we noticed that additional discounts were given to new customers, we emailed Blueto request for an adjustment in our pricing. It was great that Blue gave us the discount too! Subsequently we wrote in 3 more times and got more discounts! The final price was 429453 ISK.
Our car was a two-wheel drive car and our insurance did not cover driving on F roads. During our planning of the road trip the only location/destination that we would like to visit that involved F road was Landmannalaugar which would involve difficult drive inland. After some thought we decided to skip Landmannalaugar.
By the time we were out of the airport it was already 8.30pm and we had already missed the transfer to “Blue Car Rental” airport outlet which stopped at 6pm. It was a 450m walk to the rental outlet. 450m though was not a long walk but was still exhausting as we had two small, two big luggage bags and two back packs. The rough tamac was added more challenges.
The Blue Car Rental Outlet was operating 24 hours and at 9 pm there was only one staff manning the office. We completed all the paperwork very fast as we had already paid and check-out the car online a week before our arrival. Next was a thorough inspection of the car, setting up our own Tom Tom Car GPS and we were ready to sightsee!