What a timely post. Sitting in Keflavik airport now, waiting to fly back home.
A thing to keep in mind is that it was an explicit effort on Iceland's part to position itself as a prime tourist destination. After 2008 banking crisis they were in a severe bend and looked for ways out of it. Hence the push for the tourism. Then that volcano erupted. On one hand it all but killed nascent tourism flow, but on the other hand it actually broadcasted Iceland as a land of volcanoes and natural beauty. And the tourist tsunami started.
Be careful what you wish for I guess.
Tourism industry sucked in so many locals that there's now shortage of police force and doctors, because they pay less. But from the visitor's perspective the country now is as comfortable of the destination as it gets.
We did ~3000 km. Main roads are very good. The speed limit is 90kmh, which seems low, but go any faster and you will feel wind gusts starting to throw the car around. Gas stations are there when you need hen. As are hotels and restaurants. Many farms now have cafes or eateries, invariably with unlimited "soup buffets." Cards are universally accepted. In fact I have no idea how Icelandic money look like. Lots of tourists, but the crowd quickly thins out once you leave Reykjavik, or rather its center. Driving around the country side - there's very little traffic. More often than not we were alone on the road. However it's late October, maybe it's different in summer.
The country IS mind-boggingly beautiful. Saying this as someone who've been around the world. Insane scenery. Lava fields covered in moss, pitch black sand beaches, hot rivers that you can bathe in at -1c outside. Really different, invariably impressive.
I spent 2 weeks there doing the ring road. Everyone we met spoke perfect English. I mean absolutely perfect. We were talking to our server at a restaurant in a tiny village in the north and asked him if he had ever been to the USA since his accent was a perfect standard USA accent. He said he'd never even left his village to visit Reykjavik!
I visited a couple of months ago, and if you're an English speaker then there is little in the way of a language barrier. I don't think I met a single Icelandic person who didn't speak English while I was there.
Flights are dirt cheap. Accommodation and food is unusually expensive though, we found - even the tenting/campervaning is nowadays quite pricey.
Language was a non-issue for us. English proficiency was high. For those who don't speak English, if you're friendly enough, you can point to what you need, plus there's so many electronic aids these days if push comes to shove, it's not an issue. Perhaps more importantly, cultural norms will be familiar to Westerners, which makes it easier.
Zero barrier. Everybody speaks English, though contrary to other replies _locals_ tend to speak with a distinct accent. There are also lots of foreigners employed in the hospitality industry - Spaniards, Hungarians, Lithuanians and others - their English is markedly better.
Oh, edit - as others said, things are really quite expensive there, including food and drinks. Research before going. A breakfast of bread, butter, jam, a sausage and two sunny-side-ups can easily be 30 USD. A pint is 8-12 USD. A lunch of an unlimited soup and bread - 15-20 USD.
Not a problem for English speakers - Iceland English fluency is on par with other western/northern European cities. In the city, accents are generally mild.
From the east coast of the US, it's an easy flight. Often cheap too. Or, do a stop-over on your way to/from Europe
/UK.
For an English speaker, there's no problem. We visited about 10 years ago and the one person not speaking any English was an old lady keeping a convenience store somewhere in the north-western corner of the island.
Might be off topic but I live to think about how well Japan has leveraged tourism. Eight years ago Japanese tourism was near 100% domestic. Japanese would visit mountains, onsen, and rural family. The idea that foreigners might be interested seemed absurd.
Yet around the time of the great earthquake the Abe government say tourism as a possible plug for the massive negative current account balance. The shutdown of nuclear reactors left Japan importing vast volumes of fossil fuels. Tourism leveraged existing capital, the hotels shrines and transport networks japan has always had, while bringing foreign money.
Since then Japan has been signing visa free travel treaties with every non-hostile nation imaginable. As a side effect the Japanese passport is now the most "powerful" passport in the world.
Tokyo and Osaka can handle the foreign hordes no problem, but Kyoto has could not. It is as if Japan has sacrificed the old capital to supply the rest of the nation with fuel.
The government is still playing a 40% increase over the next many years. It will be interesting to see how Kyoto manages, and if other tourist destinations can arise.
> Eight years ago Japanese tourism was near 100% domestic.
Nope, calling bull on this. Not by a long shot. Japan has been a major international tourist destination, particularly in the winter for at least 20 years.
Well, the graph on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Japan
does seem to suggest in 2017 there were 20 million more foreign tourists in the year compared with 2010, an increase of about 250%.
The Japanese passport is powerful, but I wouldn't call it the most powerful at all[0]. There are many countries that are on par (e.g. South Korea, The Netherlands, Denmark) and multiple ones more powerful (e.g. United Arab Emirates, Germany, Finland).
I agree that it shouldn't be called the most powerful, but there's an insignificant difference between the top 20-30 countries on this list which makes it rather meaningless (IMO) to compare between them. Some random country that few people actually visit might open up visa-free travel to some on the list which will shoot them up a few places.
Anyways, I like the Nationality index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quality_of_Nationality_Ind...) which takes into account freedom-of-movement with economic and quality-of-life factors, so it isn't just a count of visa-free travel agreements. This seems like a better measure of the power or value of a specific citizenship.
Almost 10 years ago I was living in Japan as a student and I saw a shitload of tourists constantly. Japan has been a major Australian tourist destination ever since flight became common, also the reverse.
While it’s true that since it’s more accessible, certain places have more tourists than they can handle, Japan has not been “closed” in the way you’re describing for hundreds of years.
Visa is mainly economical. If it is likely for a person to come as tourist but stay for economical reasons, visa is needed. So you can give rich countries visa free treatment because their people are unlikely to stay, and you want to keep people from poor countries in check with visa requirements.
> “The early-adopter travelers are already onto the next cool, cheap, relatively intact place,” Sheivachman says. Since the Skift article, the term has been widely applied to places like Barcelona, Venice, and Tulum to suggest that no one who’s in the know would want to go there anymore.
This might be true for certain countries who’s people have recently made a direct effort to subsidize tourism in an effort to increases it. But it’s just embarrassing to think anyone who is alive to comment now could claim to be an “early adopter” of a diverse and international city like Barcelona or Venice. These places have played host to cultural (and literal!) revolutions since before we were born and they’ll continue to do so after we’re all long dead, but perhaps there will always be someone to write a pretentious Vox article about how they know the real character of a city and others shouldn’t bother to try.
I don't think that viewpoint (that Barcelona is played out and too mainstream) is at all the message of this Vox article. If anything, the article is a criticism of that viewpoint.
Barcelona is mainstream, sure. That is an objective fact. But the person I responded to seemed to imply that the Vox article was making some sort of normative judgment about Barcelona. I don't think that any such judgment actually exists in the article.
I went to Iceland back in March. I drove around the entire island in a “touristy” Mercedes camper van.
As a visitor, I would say there were the perfect amount of tourists there.. not so many that it ruined my “experience”. However, that was in March. I can’t imagine what it’s like in Summer.
I’m now learning to speak Icelandic, and looking for software jobs in Reykjavik if that tells you anything. (Hiring managers please contact me)
Maybe I’m part of the problem?
You should go to Iceland.. it’s epic in a non-cliche kind of way.
It's coming up to a decade since I moved here. I came sight unseen and thought I'd move on after a year or two but now have a wife, kids and a house!
There's a reasonable tech scene and a pretty big part of that is made up of immigrants. I worked in three companies here and all three were mostly English speaking. That can vary a bit but none of my peers have had problems moving into new roles where that wasn't the case (and its a surefire way to get better at the language quickly). Now I'm working remotely for a SV startup.
Moving here is pretty trivial if you're in the EEA as is staying on if you have work.
The golden triangle is a bit much. We started out on that route, but pulling up to the first marked site and seeing 50 coaches and throngs of old Chinese ladies all taking photographs in the same direction was offputting. But, we then left the triangle route and explored on our own, and barely saw anybody. Makes a lot of sense for tourist focused countries to keep tourists focused on a particular area or route.
Now that I think about it we did hike for 25min out to the plane crash. When we arrived it was full of instagram models taking selfies and wearing Supreme gear.. not really the kind of wilderness I was looking for.
On the flip side, we did see the Northern lights at a camp site up North. There were only a handful of people since it was still in the Winter months. It felt very pure and intimate. Like it was our secret no one else knew about. One of the greatest experiences of my life. I think that’s what all tourists are searching for.
Often when you get people taking pictures of seemingly mundane things by tourists it’s because they’ve watched a “drama” that has a protagonist go places and then that place becomes an item. Somewhat akin to random people photographing mansions of Hollywood stars. It means nothing to locals but to fans it has some sort of meaning —and there are lots of these dramas where one of the key tropes is they go abroad for whatever reason.
I visited in 2016 and drove around the entire island as well. In Reykjavik and the golden circle there were a lot of tourists indeed, but as soon as you go out of the area, there's hardly anybody and it was great. The only other place with considerable amount of tourists and tourist buses was Jokulsarlon.
Yeah I've heard from Icelandic friends some negative stuff about the country that you often don't hear about 'publicly'. I love Iceland, the language and culture but I don't think I'd want to live their.
Are you looking to move to Reykjavik because of the dev jobs or are you saying you like the landscape that much that you are willing to learn the language to experience it full time?
The latter. I’m attracted to the Icelandic culture as well as the landscape. I mentioned Reykjavík specifically because I assumed most dev jobs would be there, but I really just want to move to Iceland, haha.
Learning new languages is fun though! I think it changes the way your brain thinks.
If you're interested in learning the language, you may want to look at HÍ's Icelandic as a Second Language programs. As a side benefit, they're officially full-time university study, which makes you eligible for a student resident permit(1).
This is the route I took last year, for similiar reasons as yourself. I'm now pursuing my Master's in CS there and having a great time.
(1) Assuming you also meet all of ÚTL's general requirements.
For the practical diploma (1-year course) 10 of the 30 credits each semester are an online self-study course. Classroom time is 4 100-minute sessions per week, and the overall study load was definitely lower in that program than I have now with a 30-credit engineering program. The actual amount of study time you’ll need will be highly variable depending on your own language learning aptitude.
There’s also a full Bachelor’s program for people who have gotten the basics already. Because the baseline admission requirements are higher, I imagine it entails comparably higher amount of effort.
Best of luck. We moved here this summer and it's lovely. It's quite easy with an EEA passport and remote work. If you make it over, look me up and I'll buy you a kaffi.
As a digital nomad I have come to realise that tourist experiences tend to be very inauthentic for a number of other reasons as well.
Cities like Prague and Budapest make for great photos, but if you go just 20 minutes in any direction life is very different. There is very little glamour if you're outside the old towns.
Being a digital nomad forces you to actually live in a city rather than just sweeping through it and staying at 5 star hotels. Even then, you can't fully experience a place if you don't speak the language.
In Munich there were so many events going on, but they were not really accessible unless you spoke German.
Even if you're not in a place to do the full time digital nomad thing, I highly recommend trying the live and work in a city for a month, it's highly educational.
Timely as I’m going to Berlin/Prague/Budapest in four days :) Not so much a counter argument but a different perspective: I live in lower manhattan and have for the past 8 years or so and the only way I ever see it is when tourists come and I can show them around.
It’s a mistake to think a city represents the entire character of a country but it’s also not fair to think of it as fake or that no people from that country actually live there. I guess what I’m saying is that it sounds like you are just more interested in places that have a different class character which is totally fine. But it’s not the case that there aren’t city people who are proud of and would love to show off the beauty and history of the place they live in every city.
(Also, if you’re showing up and staying at expensive hotels you’re doing it wrong. That’s for sure.)
Roughly same educational gains can be had by staying at an Average Joe Airbnb, where normal residents live. A week should be enough to get a glimpse of what cities are really about.
>In the era of overtourism, the digital display isn’t just responsible. It’s authentic.
Maybe responsible (although also lazy - go visit some actual place that's not overcrowded). Not authentic.
I would call Perlan and similar aurora tourist attractions "aurora porn". They always present the biggest and brightest and usually speed up the clip so you can more easily see things moving. In reality, my experience of seeing auroras just incidentally (once while walking around town and another time while out at a remote cabin) has been perhaps not as visually striking but still emotionally moving. It was so faint and slow that I kept wondering if what I was seeing was really there. It was very much a different experience from the films I'd seen of auroras.
Of course, the big bright auroras are out there, too, but would you call buying a fish authentic fishing even if the fish you bought was more appealing than the fish you caught? I think not.
I don't get why he's calling it authentic. It's a simulacrum, just like porn to real sex.
But it makes me think of this photo series http://www.photography.at/_fake_holidays.html (or with more words: https://medium.com/gone/surreal-photos-from-inside-the-fake-...) of faked vacation spots: a ski hall in Dubai or of a tropical beach inside a hangar in Germany. And I have to wonder, how "authentic" is even Reykjavik nowadays? It certainly has been Disneyfied with the many many souvenir shops and "trendy" cafes, and as the article said, x years ago it used to be empty, and now it's full of tourists, so it certainly isn't "authentic" Reykjavik.
But then again, maybe tourists nowadays are just like watchers of porn. They know it's fake, but it's what they're seeking anyway. I was in Iceland in July, and even with the tourists, the nature is still great. Although I had to wonder what people were actually doing... they see something pretty and their first reaction is, "I have to take a picture of this!".
I think tourists in general are fine with fake. They just want an entertainment experience (and usually to share photos of it on social media). Whether it's authentic is usually not the point. But this might just be my jaded perspective.
I wouldn't hold the crowds in Reykjavik against the town itself, though. It's no less authentic than the seasonality of a college town. It's not the same as it was years ago, certainly, but everything changes. And I've found the tourism traffic pattern around town is actually quite narrow. Laugavegur is packed in the summer, but just move one block over and the street's practically empty. Also get out of downtown and into the suburbs and things feel much more normal.
Of course, tourists don't usually travel to foreign countries to walk around suburbs. And there's definitely an Icelandic hipster culture that enjoys the craft beer and fancy cafes as much as the tourists, so I wouldn't say that's inauthentic of modern Icelandic life. So then there's the question of which version of Iceland one considers "authentic".
There is a theme park just outside Da Nang, in Vietnam called Ba Na Hills[1]. The park is done up just like a European village. It's complete with a Gothic cathedral and a German beer hall, and is surreal to walk around.
Oddly, it's primarily targeted at South Korean tourists rather than locals.
I have seen it, several times actually. It does move like that, and it can throw a very clear shadow (for brightness).
You were unlucky, it seems. Several times the groups I was meeting up with were unlucky as well, and freaked out about the faintest glow over the horizon (and in both cases it was a better-than-50%-chance timewise).
People often actually don't believe it until they see it. It's the kind of thing I have to stop the car for or I'll crash due to not watching the road.
It's like looking at porn and then not believing fantastic sex exists at all.
Oh, I know they're out there. But it's true I've not been lucky enough to see one yet. But I also haven't gone out of my way to see them and since I live in town the visibility often isn't the best.
My photographing wife explains it as the cameras can register the aurora borealis better than your eyes can. Add post-processing on top and it doesn't look the same in real life as in the pictures. Still mesmerizing and profoundly interesting to experience though imo.
Yep. Your eyes lose there ability to resolve color in low light. Which is why you see the northern lights looking more like grey smoke rather than the colorful display your camera captures.
Countries and places all around the world, pre-mass tourist, have, however been authentic.
In that they didn't have tourist traps, their economy / businesses weren't set up on tourisms, local were indeed surprised to see you -- and not just seeing you as just another tourist to bring them money, restaurants etc were all what locals ate, etc.
So people visiting at those times -- even as recently as the 70s-80s or so for some places--, if we can call them tourists (the most used term then would be "travellers" then I guess), did get an authentic experience of the place.
Not necessarily in their own mind of course (they could still experience it under whatever BS prism), but in the physical / economic / etc reality that they encountered.
>If fully one-fifth of humanity are traveling away from home, then how foreign are tourists, after all?
As foreign they can be. Will tourists are always around in some place, each individual tourist is foreign, in that they'll spend their 2-4 weeks and leave.
They're not invested in the place, they artificially skew the local economy to cater to them, e.g. by inflating rents (e.g. through AirBnB) for people who do live and work in the place, they bring extra pollution (often-times being 2-10x the resident population of some place per year), they feed a class of rent-seekers (literally rent-seeking people like hotels, rooms to let, private beaches and exhibits, and so on), and they also bring the distasteful demand for bland services (from souvenir shops, tourist traps, BS dance clubs, fast food chains, "authentic" tourist restaurants, etc, that the locals could not care less about, but live on because of the tourists).
> they artificially skew the local economy to cater to them
How is it artificial? It's just an export, like any other. Silicon Valley exports software, Lloret de Mar exports beaches and hotel rooms. Both industries add a demand for local resources and discharge externalities, which can be overwhelming to the local community - or not.
>They're not invested in the place, they artificially skew the local economy to cater to them, e.g. by inflating rents (e.g. through AirBnB) for people who do live and work in the place, they bring extra pollution (often-times being 2-10x the resident population of some place per year), they feed a class of rent-seekers (literally rent-seeking people like hotels, rooms to let, private beaches and exhibits, and so on), and they also bring the distasteful demand for bland services (from souvenir shops, tourist traps, BS dance clubs, fast food chains, "authentic" tourist restaurants, etc, that the locals could not care less about, but live on because of the tourists).
Eventually it comes full circle and the local identity is built around some perceived vision of self importance (coping mechanism?) and being quaint and catering to tourists. These things the locals "could not care less about" eventually become the culture, disgusting as that may be. I grew up in such a place.
I could write a novel but it suffices to say that everyone who didn't stand to inherit a business fleecing tourists (or fleecing people who fleece tourists) got out as soon as they could resulting in a morally bankrupt society where you cannot trust anyone not to screw you for personal gain and I (and thousands of other people who "got out" over the years) am very much rooting for global warming to wash them all into the ocean.
>These things the locals "could not care less about" eventually become the culture, disgusting as that may be. I grew up in such a place.
Yes, that's absolutely true.
And while the modern mindset (at least in some countries) doesn't allow us to make value judgements in such matters (the idea being that "everything is OK as long as the one doing it is not forced by gun to do it, and they make money doing so"), I'd still say it's bad and sad.
Visited Iceland about 2 years ago, mainly Golden triangle. Didn't think there were too many tourists at all (and I have a low tolerance for hoards of tourists ... You couldn't get me back to Mont St Michel if you paid me).
It's a beautiful country, a bit eerily so. The blue lagoon is stunning to look at but too expensive to bathe in. Once you've seen it, you've seen it. The views don't change that much. Even on the golden triangle, looking out the window tends to get boring.
For a country constantly emphasizing the need for safety on the road, I was surprised to get a very beat up Toyota with worn out brake pads, no working charger in the car and the guy just saying "you get what you pay for".
It's incredibly expensive. Two sandwiches (and I mean 2x slices of bread with some cheese and lettuce) and soft drinks was like 20EUR or more.
I enjoyed the trip but don't really understand the hype. Perhaps it just gets more exposure cause it's safe and easy.
Among the 40+ countries I've visited the best views and nature for me were in Tenerife (of all places), inland around El Teide, Morocco's Atlas mountains and North Vietnam, everything between Hanoi and the Laotian / Chinese borders.
Based on the places you like, you're more of a temperate/tropical preference person and enjoy the wildlife and greenery associated with those places. For others like myself, beauty is in the desolate solitude of places like Alaska, New Zealand's south island, and Iceland. To your point, though, you definitely pay a price to get that kind of environment and it's not for everyone.
> Once you've seen it, you've seen it. The views don't change that much. Even on the golden triangle, looking out the window tends to get boring.
The golden circle isn't a long trip. There's a lot more to see.
> For a country constantly emphasizing the need for safety on the road, I was surprised to get a very beat up Toyota with worn out brake pads, no working charger in the car and the guy just saying "you get what you pay for".
Car hire services have been under scrutiny by the media here recently for unsafe cars, bad service and selling their old cars with the odometer rolled back. Unfortunately there still hasn't been a proper crackdown on them. I recommend to everyone to use the global brands.
> It's incredibly expensive. Two sandwiches (and I mean 2x slices of bread with some cheese and lettuce) and soft drinks was like 20EUR or more.
It's infuriating. Reykjavík and the bigger towns are OK but the price gouging that happens all around cannot be justified.
From my experience, the glory in Iceland is absolutely not found in the golden circle. The rest of the country is mind-boggingly empty and gorgeous. The interior looks like a complete different planet, the western fjords are stunning, and then when you do eventually come across another human; they are incredibly nice and welcoming.
Absolutely! I went there many times, but first time was in 2014 with my teenage daughter to do the Laugavegur trail from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk. It was a 4 day hike thru lava fields, skirting glaciers, hot vents and fumarolas. Over tourism is only a problem if you stay in the well known circuits!
I visited Iceland two years ago and loved it. It was a short visit and I did the usual tourist things, like the Golden Circle tour. I would like to go again and see other parts of the country, outside the basic tourist areas. A friend drove around the entire perimeter of Iceland and had a great time.
Interesting. I visited in the same time-frame (Jan 2017) and the main tourist sites were crowded. Not uncomfortably so, but there were definitely 3-4 busloads of tourists at each site. And KEF was packed (standing room only) when we departed. Immigration inbound at KEF was busy but efficient.
Reykjavik itself didn't feel any more crowded than any other major European city. Far less so than London or Paris. Probably more like Amsterdam, but with a smaller overall footprint.
Our rental was a Golf Polo (the small hatchback) from a name-brand agency (Hertz or somebody like that) and it was in fine condition.
It was expensive, no question. But, that's also fairly well documented in travel brochures (online or otherwise). So, it shouldn't be a surprise. We opted to rent a flat and cook for most meals. The only problem that caused - the grocer has a wall of milk of varying degrees of "sourness" and we grabbed something that, to my American palate, was rotten. Oops.
Blue Lagoon was definitely touristy. We went at dusk in a snow storm, so the atmosphere was nice (the mist and snow made it less obvious we were swimming with a few hundred other tourists). We enjoyed it, but there's no need to go twice unless you really like a spa experience.
We went snorkeling in Silfra Fissure, which was neat. Nothing at all like snorkeling on a coral reef.
I'd love to go back and do the whole ring road around the island, with a bit of hiking and camping mixed in. We only had a long weekend, so stayed in the city and all the sites we visited were fairly close. We didn't get to the northwest or southeast.
It was about half the price of other places at the time. I was fully prepared to be disappointed, but it was excellent — and had a full kitchen, which helped because food in Iceland is insanely expensive ($20 for an 'authentic' Icelandic hot dog at an outdoor stand is real ). Groceries were only(!) about 20% more than New York (still high, but not unreasonable for a remote island).
Also, I think Iceland is missing an oppertunity to export high-quality room-darkening blinds. Vampire-approved.
Unless you specifically stayed in the resort areas with the Brits, which I could understand hating, I don't see how anybody could hate the natural beauty on Tenerife. There's 2 biospheres on one island!
I lived in Iceland during part of the explosive growth of the tourism industry and witnessed some of its negative-for-the-locals effects firsthand.
There were once two or three decent mid-sized concert venues in downtown Reykjavik (capacity ~500 - ~1000) now, as far as I know there are none, as they were closed to make way for more hotels.
My partner is Icelandic and she saw the pattern from the original collapse repeating: when the number of tourists slows those new hotels will lie empty and the local culture, well the music scene at least, will be the worse off for it.
I don’t really follow the music scene here much, but there seems to be a pretty steady stream of concerts coming through Harpa, Gamla Bíó, and Háskólabíó, along with several bars that have live music all the time.
Harpa's not what I was considering a mid-sized venue. It's big and fancy and probably won't let your brand-new band play in front of 100 people. I was thinking more of NASA and the one I can't remember the name of that was on Hverfisgata.
Harpa’s got some halls that size, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything there at less than 5k ISK per ticket. Gaukurinn is still going, with something on the schedule almost every night. The only time I’ve been inside Háskólabíó was as an overflow lecture hall, so I don’t know how well it works for shows.
I visited Iceland in the summer of 2008 [0], loved the place, and loved the espresso there! Being Italian, that's something I don't easily concede to a country :)
I'll just leave a tip for anyone planning to vacation in iceland: if you plan to visit the Blue Lagoon, try and arrive just as it opens early in the morning, preferably while it's still dark out. It will be mostly empty and this results in a far different atmosphere than the traditional "water park" feel you'll get later in the day.
This cracks me up, I've been on that exact Game of Thrones tour with Theo; he's almost exactly as described in the article, which is really fun by the way.
We did the whole Golden Circle thing. We knew from that start that we were obviously been ferried around the same routes as everyone else. I was OK with that for a first trip to any country.
I didn't find the crowds over powering. Everything is either new to you or you've seen it in TV/films but you get a kick out of seeing it for real.
When we next go to Iceland I think we'll probably stay in the north and make our own way around. That'll be a different kind of holiday but still equally good.
...also I'm pretty sure that Theo said he wasn't originally from Reykjavik no matter what those lying journalist say. :P
I visited Iceland in 2016 for 10 days with two of my friends.
- We partied in Reykjavik on weekend and my god! I was amazed to see the clubbing culture there. It was so different from Bay area. Nightclubs were open till 4 and people stayed till 6. Not to mention it was summer; so sun was setting at 3am-ish while people were drunk on dance floor.
- We went towards laugavegur next day for our adventure of 4 day trail. It was a pretty smooth drive until we were attacked by armies of black fly who entered our car through open window and my friend almost toppled the car over while fighting them off (yes the road was 9-10 ft above the land).
- Next day, we started our trek where we experienced the unforgiving weather of Icelandic highlands.
I have been stuck in avalanches before (rockies, patagonia, himalayas) but this was a level up. The weather was colder, the wind had a deathly sting. We had to dig up our camp in snow and at that point tbh it seemed like I was digging my grave. It kind of made sense why they shot Castle black senes for GoT here. Don't get me wrong, I fully enjoyed the hike. The colors, the view and the greenery was amazing. The best part of it was making pinto beans over steam coming below 6ft of snow.
- Next 5 days we camped near beautiful waterfall of Seljalandsfoss. It was surreal. We used to drive to same grocery store in morning, get basic stuff to cook and get drunk in the afternoon (or night..? it was hard to tell). It was pretty close to popular Skogafoss waterfall but this waterfall was equally beautiful with lot less people visiting.
The point I am trying to make is yes, tourism is overwhelming for a delicate place for Iceland but you don't have to visit just the golden circle or the jokursalon.
Yes, these places are beautiful but the experience really gets terrible when there are a thousand people trying to get glimpse of snow island in 200 m long standing space.
My advice to the people who are in 20s: Try to hike, drive to unconventional places. Iceland has a lot to offer than what you see or read in blogs/instagram. The fun of travel is in experiencing local culture, exploring places and stumbling upon things. It is NOT about getting selfie and checking off things to do in a list written in some random blog.
Wow that dude is a real POS. Good on the UK from banning his ass. I didn't find the GP's link to that article funny. GP must have a very out-dated sense of what is considered "funny".
A thing to keep in mind is that it was an explicit effort on Iceland's part to position itself as a prime tourist destination. After 2008 banking crisis they were in a severe bend and looked for ways out of it. Hence the push for the tourism. Then that volcano erupted. On one hand it all but killed nascent tourism flow, but on the other hand it actually broadcasted Iceland as a land of volcanoes and natural beauty. And the tourist tsunami started.
Be careful what you wish for I guess.
Tourism industry sucked in so many locals that there's now shortage of police force and doctors, because they pay less. But from the visitor's perspective the country now is as comfortable of the destination as it gets.
We did ~3000 km. Main roads are very good. The speed limit is 90kmh, which seems low, but go any faster and you will feel wind gusts starting to throw the car around. Gas stations are there when you need hen. As are hotels and restaurants. Many farms now have cafes or eateries, invariably with unlimited "soup buffets." Cards are universally accepted. In fact I have no idea how Icelandic money look like. Lots of tourists, but the crowd quickly thins out once you leave Reykjavik, or rather its center. Driving around the country side - there's very little traffic. More often than not we were alone on the road. However it's late October, maybe it's different in summer.
The country IS mind-boggingly beautiful. Saying this as someone who've been around the world. Insane scenery. Lava fields covered in moss, pitch black sand beaches, hot rivers that you can bathe in at -1c outside. Really different, invariably impressive.
You all should come ;)