I was reading some of our past planning posts and realized that we never gave an update on the extension to the campervan rental. In Planning Update 3, we discussed that we were asking for a price to extend the rental by two days, and cancel our two-night stay in Reykjavik at the Grandinn Luxury Apartment. We did hear back on the pricing for the extension, and it was in line with the daily pricing for the other nights of the rental, and not the much higher pricing I had gotten when I tried to add the extension days at the online CampEasy booking site. The additional two nights were about the same price as the cost for staying at the Grandinn Luxury Apartment we had initially reserved in Reykjavik, plus the cost of a rental car for two days that we needed to get from the Keflavik Airport back to Reykjavik, so we opted to add the extension to the campervan rental and cancel the apartment rental in Reykjavik.
It was going to be a bit of a hassle to return the campervan near the airport, take a taxi to get a rental car at the airport, and then drive back into Reykjavik to stay the two nights. The airport is about 58 km from Reykjavik, so it was a lot of back and forth driving. Plus, we still had to return the rental car the day before we fly home, and again, take a taxi to our hotel by the airport for our last night in Iceland.
We may still plan on visiting some of the sights in Reykjavik, but will have to do it with the campervan. There are some campgrounds nearby the city that we could stay at for a night, most likely the last night before we turn in our campervan. We will just have to see how the rest of the plan works out. In the end, we felt we might enjoy seeing more of the country, we were not that impressed with what there was to see in the city of Reykjavik itself.
We will still stay one night in the Konvin Hotel near the Keflavik Airport after we return the CamperVan before we fly home the next day. The hotel has a free airport shuttle, and we have already made reservations for the shuttle ride to the airport. Hopefully, we might be able to arrange a ride to our hotel from the folks at CampEasy..
We have also been working on the planning for our route around Iceland. The CampEasy website has a pre-planned 13-day Itinerary that we are using as the basis for our route. It is in a counterclockwise direction around Iceland, which is the typical direction most people follow. However, several online posts from other travelers have said it is a good idea to have the flexibility to go in the opposite direction if there are weather issues in the primary route direction. We are not sure this is really applicable for a longer duration trip, maybe it would be better for a week-long trip where the weather is not going to change much from beginning to end, but by the end of 15 days, we could be in a situation where we avoid bad weather at the beginning, only to see worse weather at the end due to the duration and uncertainty of longer range forecasts.
I have been putting all of the stops in the CampEasy Itinerary into an Excel Spreadsheet. This will give us some ability to make adjustments to the stops after we compare each day’s plan against other resources to make sure we are seeing the most popular sights for each area we travel in. The spreadsheet also had links to websites for each stop, some are links to information on one of three or four popular Iceland information sights, and some are for a dedicated website for the attraction itself. This will allow us to more easily look at specific directions and recommendations for each place listed.
This is really just an outline to get something on paper so we have an idea of where we will be each day. There are campgrounds listed for each day on the CampEasy Itinerary, but we will also look to see if there may be any others in the area, just in case one might be full. We have also determined that the Iceland Campingcard that is offered may be a good deal as long as most of the campgrounds we may plan to stay in participate in that camping pass. The Campingcard is a flat fee and covers the cost to camp for 30 days for two adults and two children, but it looks like it is still a good deal for us even with only 15 nights of campground stays. There is also a discount on the cost of fuel for the CamperVan, so that is also a benefit.
Eventually, we will try and establish some durations for the amount of time we anticipate stopping at each sight so we can tell if we really have time for everything. Some places listed are just cities to visit, not specific natural sights like waterfalls or beaches.
We will also be looking at other Itineraries that are available from online websites to make sure we have a list of everything we want to see. We have found that some places that people like to visit are a little more remote than others, and require 4-wheel drive to access, which we have. Some of these alternate sites also require some hiking to get to, so we have to decide how much time and effort we are willing to put forth to get to the more remote sites. Since we have 15 days of campervan rental, we should have some extra time, which is one of the reasons we extended the rental, we thought seeing more sights around Iceland and having a little extra time was better than staying the two nights in Reykjavik.
We have been adding additional sights to the basic CampEasy 13-Day itinerary, trying to establish a complete list of possible places we want to visit. This is a little harder than we thought since we have to figure out which day of the basic CampEasy itinerary and the general area of Iceland where these additional sights are located.
One item of note is that several of the most popular nature attractions are most likely morning visits based on the natural progression of the route, so we will need to see if that impacts our timeline, we may want to visit those when the sun is at a higher point for taking photos. Morning time is better for having less crowds at the most popular sights, so it will be a balance of sunlight for better photos versus crowds.
In the end, we just want to make sure we visit as many of the wonderful sights in Iceland as possible, but we also do not want to be rushed and want to have time to enjoy the peaceful beauty of the country.
We have also been learning to fly the DJI Mini 4 Pro Drone we purchased a few weeks ago, specifically to take with us to Iceland. With my experience flying RC model airplane many years ago, I have found that the drone is much easier to fly, it is not always moving, and it will just hover unless you are moving the controller joysticks to move it about. Plus, we can fly it from our deck. However, flying the drone smoothly for taking videos is a whole different challenge. That takes practice. The drone controller uses different joystick inputs than the RC models used, so I am having to re-learn that aspect, but it is fun. It is just hard to re-learn that the up-and-down joystick movements for a model airplane are the exact opposite for the drone. We will try and post a short video of our home on the lake to this blog as a test.
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