Reykjavik to Jökulsárlón and Back in 1 Day

I recently spent three days in Iceland with my girlfriend. We rented a car, so we had a bit of flexibility. We first did the obligatory trip to the Blue Lagoon, and then spent a day driving the Golden Circle, both of which were worth the hype. Then we were left with one more day, and we weren’t sure how best to use it.

I had heard that the glacial icebergs at Jökulsárlón were a must-see, but at a 782km round trip drive, it seemed a bit ambitious. I read quite a few forums and posts that all recommended going, but they also recommended spending the night somewhere in the South. I did find some posts from a few who had done the round trip drive in a day, but they didn’t give me confidence that it wasn’t a crazy thing to do. But after mulling our options, we decided to go for it.

Our experience: if you have a car and only an extra day to spare, it’s undoubtedly worth the drive. Stop thinking about it and just go. For us at least, this day was the highlight of our time in Iceland, as there’s a quite a bit of varied landscape and there are plenty of worthwhile stops along the way. You will just need to aware of how much time you spend in each place. We made it there and back in about 14 hours.

Here’s what we did:

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We left Reykjavik around 8:00am and headed to Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss, two amazing waterfalls. Seljalandsfoss is the waterfall you can walk behind, and Skógafoss is just plain impressive (at a 60m drop, it’s twice the height of Gullfoss on the Golden Circle). We probably spent half an hour to and hour at each.

Then we headed right for Jökulsárlón. We got there in the early afternoon, and signed up for a boat tour. We were a bit worried about not having made reservations in advance, but it turned out to be pretty easy to get a ticket on the spot (they seem to leave every 30-45 minutes). And it was nice to not have to worry about getting there by a certain time for a reservation. The boat is definitely worth it. For those who have seen a Duck Tour boat in Boston, it’s essentially a jumbo-sized Duck Tour vehicle that can drive on land and in the water. The view from the water was great, and the information from the tour guide was surprisingly interesting. Glaciers are just awesome.

Afterwards, we headed back, with a stop at Reynisfjara, a black sand beach near Vik with some gigantic rock formations. I liked this beach much more than I expected I would. It’s is often referred to as an inverse beach because of its dark sand and frothy waves. It made for great black and white photos. We easily could have spent a few hours here alone, but we kept it to about an hour.

So that was our day. We got back into town around 10pm. Essentially four stops, and a lot of driving, but once you’re all the way in Iceland, I’d say without a doubt it’s worth it.

Here are some highlights:

Seljalandsfoss: