Day 8 | 15th July
Reykjadalur x Seljalandsfoss
Hii, from where I left off on my last post, I mentioned about the road trip that we went on. So excited to sharee! Also a little disclaimer, it'll be a pretty long post with experiences and tons of photos. But here goes nothing!
The day before, we finally booked for our car rental. All in honesty, booking was just the easy part. What came next on the actual day of collection was quite something. According to Sarah, she told us that all car rental companies in Iceland are reliable and even if they were to scam/cheat you (touchwood), Iceland has a small population. Thus, making hunting them down relatively easy which does kinda make sense. So with that we decided to book our car with Firefly which was the cheapest we've seen.
According to the tourist information counter guy we booked with, he told us that Firefly cars were cheaper because they're not brand new and were the cars used by a well-known company called Hertz. Basically Firefly cars are hand-me-downs by the sister company, Hertz. Which would explain the major price difference. Sarah also recommended a car rental company called Viking Cars. It works similarly like Airbnb. The cars belong to Icelandic locals and you could rent them out with pretty good prices. We did try for one car, but by the time the person replied we already booked for our cars. Though I believe it would be a pleasant experience.
Our car for two days!
Okay, so here's our story on our experience with Firefly. I drive only an automatic car, so we told the guy for automatic cars. Maybe it's partly our fault cause we didn't clearly mention it though my buddy seemed pretty sure we did mention it. So I don't know who's fault it is really. Okay first, the guy from Firefly was supposed to pick us up at our Airbnb home at 0830 to send us to collect our car. However, the driver came 1 and a half hour late!! How unacceptable and unprofessional. We called the company a few times but they always claimed the driver was on the way. & the location of the collection was just closeby like about a 15 minutes drive.
With the driver being super late, we were slightly agitated as we were wayy behind our planned schedule. Okay, next up when we arrived, the guy that served us seemed pretty arrogant & the kind that'll eat you up if you're not careful. With that, we were extremely thorough when we checked for initial damages with photos as evidence. Every single inch we checked. After checking the exterior with our already flustered moods, we checked the interior. & it was then that I realized, the car wasn't automatic.
I was like 'Helllll nooo, I can't drive no manual car.' So we went back to the guy, fought our way about the car and him calling the tourist agency we booked with. We were pretty pissed off and it was already like 10am+. So much time wasted on this. In the end, I think the guy saw how annoyed we were & how he couldn't outsmart us, he gave in and gave us a car from Hertz with no extra charge. With that, we eagerly left the place with our brand new car.
It indeed was one heck of a morning.
& off to our first stop.
1. Reykadalur, Hveragerði
Our first drive was the toughest. With me driving after having not driven for 2 years, & us still cooling down from our morning and having issues with driving through a town in the cold rain and the screens entirely fogging up. We were so not ready with everything. I got really scared when the screens fogged up and we couldn't see anything much even with the heater on. I soon realised the windows had to be opened so that it doesn't fog up. Haiz guyz, learning lesson for ya'll if you're driving in cold temperatures overseas. We never had such problems in Singapore.
About an hour and 16.6km later, we arrived our first destination. I sighed a breath of relief.
Enough about our difficulties, now about this place. It's a 2.5 hours of hike up and down the steep hills to a natural geothermal hot spring. The hike is said to be easy but....dang it was pretty tough! We were huffing and puffing at every inclining hill and rocky paths. Though make sure you wear proper shoes. & in that moment, I was thankful for my Timberland shoes I bought there.
The beginning path up. and a ton more to go
Conquered the first high point! and we had no idea of how much more we had to cover..
Flies started buzzing around. I got annoyed and paranoid that they'd enter my ears. therefore...
Our first stream sighting!
& seeing the steam, we knew we were sooo close. oh & the egg smell.
& we're finally in paradiseee!
There's no changing rooms besides the changing 'corners'. So....be ready to partially unintentionally expose some skin. My costume was pretty easy, I just threw on a dress and changed out my pants to shorts.
After the dip in the hot lake. It honestly was truly amazing and felt soo good. The natural hot springs were so hot that we had to get out for abit. & I think it kinda warmed up our bodies so much that we felt hot lol.
& then it suddenly started pouring quite alot making the path rather slippery. Once again, good shoes are really crucial! Somebody didn't have proper shoes, she kept slipping.
is this how heaven looks like?
WE SURVIVED THE HIKE AND MADE IT TO PARADISE!
I highly highly recommend giving this place a visit! & you HAVE TO dip into the thermal lake. I thoroughly enjoyed this place despite the long hike to and fro. But it was worth it. I'm not sure which one I prefer more, the Blue Lagoon or this. haaa I can't decide
& off we go to our next stop!
2. Seljalandsfoss, Þórsmerkurvegur
The estimated duration to this stop is about 1 hour plus. Though it took us less, about 30-40 minutes. The roads are mostly straight and pretty empty besides a few cars. And the speed limits were mostly 90km/h on those roads and 50-70km/h when nearing a town. Though lettt me tell you thisss. No one, drives at 90km/h. I don't drive really fast, I'm usually at a 70-80km/h and occasionally I hit 90km/h. Even with that, every single car overtakes me. Soo...most of them are driving at 100km/h or more.
Okay back to the place, along the route there, you should be able to see the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano. Really lovely waterwall. You could actually walk behind the waterfall which I think is pretty cool. But we were tight for time & we might've been a little lazy after that hike and swim, so we decided to just take photos and left 15 minutes later.
Amazing landscapes
hahaha, I don't know if you notice but we were practically forcing ourselves to take a photo with the waterfall cause we were soo tiredd. but YOLO right haaa
And those were the two places we visited on the 15th! We made one more stop after that before heading over to our campsite for the night. I'll leave that for the next post.
Also I may have some exciting news & plans to share next up, hopefully.
Yay, till the next post next week!
Firefly Car Rental
http://www.firefly.is/
How much we paid for 2 days: 24800 Kr = SGD272.22 (Approx SGD 136.11 each person)
Note: Manual cars are cheaper than automatic. In the end, the mishap we went through kinda worked out for the better cause we saved some money and for a better car.
Car Insurance: 1800 Kr (Recommended just in case)
Other things to note: Prices varies depending on season. They're generally the highest during Summer.
p.s. Also, thought I should add that the drive is generally easy. The South Iceland is the most popular place that people would usually drive to. This entire roadtrip is just on one road which is Route 1. Google it up. It's why it's called The Ring Road.
No comments:
Post a Comment