Elena Vasquez · May 20, 2026
Three hopping steps and a scorched pair of feet — that’s the tally from my first minute barefoot on Reynisfjara, the black sand beach outside Vík that everyone photographs and almost nobody researches beforehand. It was mid-July, the sky had settled into that unfinished silver-blue Iceland does so well, and I’d left my sneakers by … Read more
Elena Vasquez · May 7, 2026
Woodsmoke and strong coffee, a hen making her opinions loudly known across a gravel yard, steam rising off a mug someone pressed into my hands before I’d even asked for it — that’s the 7 AM I remember from a farmhouse kitchen somewhere between Vík and Höfn, and it’s the exact moment I realized what … Read more
Elena Vasquez · May 5, 2026
Paying €10 a day for gravel protection beats losing your deposit over a cracked bumper, every single time — and I know that because I ran the opposite experiment. I was standing at a gravel pullout near Vík while a rental agent photographed every chip and scratch on my bumper, doing math in his head … Read more
Elena Vasquez · May 4, 2026
One gasp, involuntary and slightly embarrassing since nobody was around to hear it, and about ninety seconds of hover time — that’s what it took above Kirkjufell for me to understand what this country does to aerial footage. From ground level, the mountain already earns its reputation: that arrowhead silhouette rising off the Snæfellsnes Peninsula … Read more
Elena Vasquez · May 3, 2026
“Just wing the season, Iceland’s stunning either way” — I heard some version of that from at least three different backpackers before my first trip, usually delivered with the confidence of someone who’d only ever seen the place in July. It’s terrible advice. I’ve had a family picnicking on rocks beside me at Skógafoss at … Read more
Elena Vasquez · March 3, 2026
“You won’t need anything special for the waterfalls—just bring a rain jacket,” a fellow traveler told me before my first Iceland trip, and I believed her right up until I was standing at Skógafoss in June (Iceland’s version of summer) getting worked over by what amounted to a horizontal hurricane aimed squarely at my face. … Read more
Elena Vasquez · February 27, 2026
Eight percent — that’s what the battery icon on my phone read, flashing red, while the map app still counted off 47 kilometers to the next town. I’d landed on a nameless stretch of Route 1 between Egilsstaðir and Mývatn, up in Iceland’s northeast, on a piece of road that stops feeling like a road … Read more
Elena Vasquez · January 14, 2026
The Dacia Duster That Survived 1,300 Kilometres of Icelandic Gravel I spent an embarrassing amount of time on car rental sites before the Ring Road trip — we’re talking three browsers open, a spreadsheet, and a growing suspicion that every company was quoting me a different base price just to watch me suffer. What finally … Read more
Elena Vasquez · January 13, 2026
I booked this trip at 11pm on a Tuesday after a meeting where someone used the phrase “synergize our deliverables” for the third time in an hour — my corporate brain needed an escape hatch, fast, and something about typing…
Elena Vasquez · January 12, 2026
Five nights. That’s how long I stood outside in sub-arctic wind before the sky finally cooperated, and by night three I’d started wondering if quitting my job to fly to Reykjavík on a one-way ticket had been the worst decision of my adult life. Everyone back home assumed I was unraveling. Fair assessment, honestly. But … Read more
