Hitchhiking in Iceland
Hitchhiking on Iceland at the end of September? You guys are crazy! — Commented the first driver who gave us a lift. And yet, we did it – in 7 days with help of 28 wonderful drivers we traveled over 1150 km and we found that Iceland is as beautiful (and unpredictible at the same time) as it is described.
Visiting Iceland was my biggest dream since I saw some photos on 500px.com. With every photo I've seen (especially after Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010), with every article read and every timelapse video watched, I was falling more and more in love to this island. But strangely, for years I have postponed my trip. Deep inside I was worried that Iceland may turn out to be not as magical as I imagine (something like Paris syndrome) or weather will spoil my plans. Also, I was a bit afraid, that I will not be able to invent any new way to picture all the wonders of Iceland, both because of lack of skills and strong competition.
This year I decided to give it a try. After all, I can go there again multiple times (and for sure I will)! And after 7 days it turned out that Iceland is indeed as beutiful, phenomenal and magnific as I always imagined.
I heard that there is a saying on Iceland: 'If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes'. I can totally agree! Photos: the one above and the one below were taken during half an hour!
Planning this trip I was a bit worried about hitchhiking, especially that the end of September is not a high season on Iceland. As it turned out, hitchhiking works perfectly even in not-so-high season. Our daily average was around 200 km, which is very good considering fact that most of the time we spent outside of cars!
We met wonderful people from all around the world. Some rides were very short, while other ones lasted the whole day. We noticed that local people stop mostly during awful weather (heavy rain and vicious wind) while tourists tend to stop more often during nice weather.
We saw mostly the sourthern part of Iceland, from Garður in the west to Jökulsárlón in the east and Golden Circle. Maybe it would be possible to do the whole road around the island in week. But why? We decided to go slowly, enjoy beautiful landscapes and random chats. Next time we will probably visit Western Fjords which were described by a lot of people as the most beautiful part of Iceland.