Logistics and Everything But The Volcano

There is already another review of Akureyri but I find it completely innacurate because it's more about the North of Iceland as a whole, in my eyes! This may be misleading to the visitor.

Akureyri is Iceland's 2nd city built on the banks of the River Glera. Akureyri looks impressive as you drive into it at night on the road from Myvatn. Unfortunately it's not particularly interesting in the day, like the majority of Icelandic towns, the design of them is similar to the US houses that seem to blow away like a plastic bag each time a hurricane hits them and not particularly appealing to me. The town centre is no different from a medium sized UK town and is completely dead, everything closes relatively early and there is very little sightseeing options.

History
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An amazing way to start out as a city, Akureyri was first mentioned in 1562 when a woman was sentenced for "sleeping" with a man whilst not in possession of a marriage certificate. Akureyri wasn't infact a proper settlement at this time but just a shop and storehouse of Danish merchants. In the late 18th century, Akureyri finally had it's first house and was recognised as a trading post, it's population an almighty 8 people! The Danish King (Christian VII) who was keen to improve the standards of Icelandic life failed in his mission to settle it as a succesful trading post but the locals instead learnt how to grow various plantations, including potatoes. In more recent history, Akureyri was used by PBY Catalina which protected supply ships from the US going to UK and Murmansk from the German U-boats and in 1944 Iceland became a sovereign state. Lots of country folk moved to the city where a roaring fishing trade and various other commerce has grown, so much so that they have needed to employ workers from abroad! The current population stands at 17,000.

Transport
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Akureyri has flights from all over Europe and is on the A1 Ring Road, as there are no trains in Iceland and no public bus service, you are best off renting a car. There are tourist buses in the summer, which are incredibly insanely priced. Akureyri - Reykjavik via the Kjolur Route is highly recommended though. Passing through Hveravellir, Gulfoss and Geysir on the way, you see 3 of Iceland's major attractins one route. The road is not tarmacced and has enormous puddles all over it, don't try it with a non 4WD vehicle with high ground clearance!

Sights
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Akureyri is also within easy distance of Husavik (coastal town, the whale watching capital of the world), Myvatn (hot springs and all sorts of crazy volcanic actvity), Grimsey (an island full of pufffins in the Arctic Circle) and the aforementioned places. The Catholic Church and The Botanical Gardens are two things definitely worth visiting but apart from that I'd just use it as a stop gap to stock up on food/alcohol which aren't so readily available in other parts, Iceland is rather big and there are far more interesting things to see than Akureyri.

Camp Site
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Dull with no atmosphere, the only thing that was half entertaining about the place was that someone had written an amusing ditty on the back of the door of the cubicle toilet. Everyone, I met during the trip - agreed it was undoubtedly the worst campsite in Iceland and many people had tried to leave in the morning without paying due to their dissatisfaction (which was very possible!). It seems that who ever is running the place has lost interest in it.

Shopping
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Did notice some superb woolen goods in Akureyri, there is a shop on the main street and it has a far better selection than anywhere that we could find in Reykjavik. If you see something you like, I recommend snapping it up, it's unlikely you'll find it cheaper or better or in the worst case ever again anywhere in Iceland.

Elding is the no.1 whale sighting tour company in Reykjavik, running boats from their harbour every couple of hours, you will likely be handed a leaflet at some point or another during your stay in Europe's most northerly capital city.

Now unless you are a fish, it's not every day you get to see a whale so despite being on a budget trip, we were willing to fork out whatever it costed to see one. At 45 Euros per person (I recall it being more when we did it in 2007 though) it's not too dear for a one-off lifetime experience.

We bought the tickets at a little kiosk and eagerly awaited the boat to arrive, like Russian babushkas at a tram people wanted to get on whilst the previous visitors were still getting off!

Finally on the boat,, everyone sits down and is gets a briefing and are told about the captain's system of alerting people where the whale is by saying 12 o clock (directly in front of the boat), 2 o clock etc, sea sickness tablets are handed out along with water. You then go downstairs and don a warm insulated lifejacket which makes you look like a spaceman, foolishly I dipped my hand in the pocket and found someones used tissue but apart from this they were pretty cool.

You then get out on the deck and fight for position, seemingly assuming you know where the whales will appear better than anyone else. There's a continuous spring of information coming out of the speakers (in English and German), commenting on everything from fishing trawlers, sea birds and generally giving you a bit of knowledge about the whales - nothing that you don't learn when you are about 8 at school though!

Finally Captain Bird's Eye spots something, informs the sighters some of which are heavily prepared with ammo (enormous cameras and binoculars), there's then a struggle to get to that part of the boat first - some people who didn't quite understand the clock system seem to do their own thing before rectifying it and arriving late on the scene. It's full steam ahead and the whale has moved, so everybody runs across deck again whilst the engines are turned down, it's then a game of cat and mouse as the boat tracks the whale. Regular updates are given by the announcer on the speaker, when the boat slows down, the words become a husky whisper like one of those perverted old men telephone calls (I imagine)

Before you know it, the tour is over - you've been out there chasing a whale for an hour and it's time to return to harbour. No sightings, you think - great I get another chance. However, the sighting of a small tail fin is considered enough apparently.

Happiness with a whale sighting service very much depends on whether you see a whale or not and whilst the tours can't be completely faulted for you not seeing a whale, I did feel that they "bigged it up" a bit too much on their brochures and was rather disappointed with the outcome. Husavik is a much better place to see whales, there are far more sightings and full sightings at that. The waters around Reykjavik are a little too busy and there's simply less whales out there. If you do see a whale in full, you'll be pleased with the service, if you don't - at least you get another chance but if you only get a glimpse of it's arse, it doesn't seem all that it's cracked up to be.

In the past, I've done a lot of hitchhiking and like to give it a go where ever I go. Iceland was no different and unless you rent a car, it's really the only way to get around with a very limited bus service (which finishes at the end of August, does tourist routes and is extremely expensive) and no train line.

Apart from the small urban area around the capital city, Iceland's road system is exceptionally quiet, therefore care should be taken when it comes to the weather, time and routes you choose to hitchhike. The Iceland Ring (Road No.1) has enough traffic in either an anti-clockwise or clockwise direction and lifts will normally take you considerably far. We arrived at Seydisfjordsdur on the ferry and decided to head around anti-clockwise, less traffic goes this way but there is still some.

I would certainly not recommend hitchhiking over any off-road routes,the Kjolur would likely prove to cold and windy and even the road to Dettiffoss could prove tricky. I certainly wouldn't start walking on these types of roads and would just wait for a lift from the main trunk road and make sure that the car was going the whole distance.

Most cars you see are only visiting neighbours or going to the nearest shop/farm and it's therefore important that you hitchhike in the right direction at the right time, for instance - traffic in isolated areas heading to the closest town in the morning and back in the afternoon. We found it very tricky to hitchhike from Lake Myvatn to Husavik, the wind was relentless and the weather was around 0 but it seemed pretty damn cold and this was in the summer. We eventually gave up and ended up going to Godafoss instead, a girl who was trying to do the same thing reported that she got their incredibly easily because many children in their parents cars were taking part in a football match in Husavik.

Icelanders are friendly and are willing to stop, in fact if the car is going for a long-distance rather than just around the corner, there's a really good chance they will take you. Likewise holidaymakers don't seem to fear a hitchhiker in Iceland as they may in other foreign countries and we had a bit of luck with both Germans and Czechs. If you only want to get to Reykjavik as many students do, it's worth negotiating a ride with someone on the ferry over.

Back in the summer of 2007, I used Smyril Line twice. Price wise I don't remember the exact fee but I know that having booked both journeys online the price from Lerwick to Torshavn and Torshavn to Reykjavik wasn't too bad and was definitely not more than about 70 quid.

I was of course a foot passenger and if you wanted to take your car.. it would be a rather pointless activity because whilst a car is very useful in Iceland due to the major lack of public transport, the roads and stones flying up from speeding drivers are more than likely to leave your car in a different condition than you came there with.

On top of that the Faroe Islands is small and easy to get around in and both places are relatively cheap to rent a car. You can add a couple of hundred on to the price if you want to take your car both ways and then you still have to get it to Lerwick!

As far as the boat itself went it was pretty quiet both times round. I checked out the swimming pool at the bottom of the boat the first time round which seemed to be more of a big bath with the water splashing all over the place due to the roughness of the sea. There was also a sauna though this seemed to be a place for German men to showcase their beer bellies. The duty free was open for a while but seemed to close shortly after we had left the dock, only to open an hour before docking again at the next port. I thought this was a bit irritating - ideally it would be 24 hours as we ran out of booze and couldn't get anymore!

I also tested out the cinema which was small yet effective and as the boat was pretty much empty due to everyone feeling ill, it was about the most fun thing to do. It seems that most people sleep on this trip which is a bit of a shame as it could be quite fun - seasickness is for wooses if you ask me!

I happen to think that Iceland would look nice with a little train service running around the island, it's not to be though. Iceland doesn't have any train connections nor does it have a public bus service. If you don't take a car, rent a car or drive a car, then you are left with hitchhiking which is relatively easy in Iceland due to the small population and the fact they know you are a tourist. Occasionally though you might be heading to somewhere which is remote and you don't feel like freezing your butt off on the side of the road. As long as it's the summer - then you do have another option

There is a private bus service geared towards tourists that operates between June and the end of August. This bus service is called BSI and the routes tend to go from one sightseeing destination to another. You can buy buss passports which allows you flexibility on long routes. The prices vary from 20,000 to 30,000 isk - which is certainly not cheap but is made more affordable by the current currency rate of the Icelandic Kroner.

Apart from the Arctic Island of Grimsey, the Western fjords and the sea port of Seydisfjordur, there aren't really too many sightseeing areas which aren't untouched with even Dettifoss and Askja covered. Buses look awesome from the outside, extremely high up - they have large wheels and great suspension which all come in handy considering the rugged terrain they often encounter.

I only used the service once over the Kjolur but the office opened up on time and everything related to the bus service was punctual. There are plenty of toilet stops because the bus stops for a while at sightseeing stops to let passengers get off, admire what ever natural wonder there is to see and to freshen up. Providing you are there in the right season and have enough funds to pay for the relatively dear tickets, this is an easy hassle-free way of seeing the island and is possibly preferable to renting or taking your own car in fact because you don't have to worry about damaging it.

The problem I find with travel reviews, in particular those you can find in guide books is that they rarely say anything negative about a place at all. Therefore you often have an idyllic view of somewhere before having gone there. Summing up Iceland's capital Reykjavik - I would probably call it an over-rated tourist trap that lives off its name as the world's most northerly capital.

On the up side - there is an alcohol shop! Having been to Akureyri on a Sunday when everything was closed and our previous sip of the golden juice dating back to the previous week when a can of warm Viking was gifted to us by some Czechs who had travelled about 200km to stock up on it, we were in dire need of a beer! Better yet, there's a lot of immigrants in Reykjavik - so the shop was filled with decent foreign beer as opposed to the Icelandic water!

There's nothing in the way of natural wonders in comparison to the rest of the country but one wouldn't really expect that from a capital city. Instead, you will find suburbs with wide roads and enormous jeeps often with personal number plates (with only 300,000 Icelanders - it's easy not to clash!) such as the humorous "Big Boy" I managed to photograph. The centre is less rigid, in its road design but doesn't impress with bland architecture and expensive but ultimately dull boutiques that makes its southerly neighbour capital Torshavn look like Paris.

Perhaps the two buildings of note (other than the aforementioned bottle shop) is the impressing and uniquely shaped Hallgrímskirkja. Perlan, another inventive building is a glass dome on 4 water tanks which looks good from a distance but is fairly tacky inside with an expensive bar/restaurant and the mandatory souvenir shop (or are they called artefacts these days?!) Tjornin "The Pond" is a relatively nice area of the city near the city hall and a handful of museums and is very much the quintessential duck feeding destination.

The whale sighting tours (which I'm about to review) aren't a patch on the ones in Husavik and the guides seem to be aware of this as they spend the majority of the time talking about sea birds instead.

There are some nice woolen goods and there is the attraction of getting tax back at the airport due to Iceland's non EU status but any other souvenirs are mostly tacky and Viking or puffin related.

Iceland's most boring destination by far and probably the least interesting capital city in Europe, I would say. Reykjavik's so-called amazing nightlife is also a bit of a lie, in my book - whilst the Icelanders do like to get tanked particularly at the weekend and particularly at home, pubs and clubs don't really get going until about midnight when the locals are already to drunk to have that much fun. There is an array of live musicians though who mostly play that melancholy arty indie sound not too distant from the country's success stories - Bjork and Sigur Ros.

Hotdogs are stunning value in Reykjavik and the backbone of a budget traveller's diet there, banks are also an awesome little adventure (or were until the crisis at least), they are a bit like five star hotels with free water, coffee, biscuits and internet!

The Kjolur is a highland road in Iceland which goes from just after the hamlet of Varmalid some kilometres west of Akureyri to The Golden Circle close to Reykjavik. Although it is passable without a 4WD, it would have been ny on impossible when we went despite it being August.

Puddles were so huge on the road that anything less than a tank struggled to plough through them. Rental cars don't allow you to take them offroad in Iceland and as we didn't have our own car with us (what am I talking about.. I can't even drive yet!), the amount of traffic looked extremely minimal and to ensure at least one overland journey during our visit - we opted for the easiest option albeit not a cheap one: the bus.

The last bus of the year in fact, just about all Icelanders have cars and there isn't really a proper public bus service. Just a bus company that works for two or three months during the summer connecting various sightseeing destinations. By the end of August, the majority of them have either ended or are about to end. We boarded the early morning bus from Akureyri and there was never more than about 8 people on the bus the whole way. The bus itself was an attraction with humongous ground clearance and the most enormous wheels that would definitely make the Mesopotamian who invented the wheel proud.

Initially on the ring road, I grew a sense of curiosity when we entered the Kjolur, crossing over the salmon filled Blanda river we started to climb before reaching a high plain with two glaciers on either side (an invisible distance away though) initially a bit of a revelation - the novelty soon wore off and it all began to look the same. The bus stopped at Hveravellir, a hostel hut with nearby natural hot springs, the weather was torrid, cloudy and grey with cold rain lashing down.

After that it was back on the road again, the windows became steamed up and the terrain monotonous - a burst of excitement occurred only when we drove through a large puddle! To the western side of the Kjolur, you can see collections of stones used to mark the old route through this desert of tundra - this path is known as the Kjalvegur.

There is a brief spell of interest as a nice little mountain range appears but apart from that the terrain is very flat and stone-filled like a dusty African marketplace when it is closed! At the end of the road a bit of amusement may derive from witnessing tourists attempting to start the road in ridiculously small cars and being told to turn around by the bus driver and the finally you hit tarmac and The Golden Ring. The crossing takes about 5 hours, slightly longer with the bus as it stops at Hveravellir for about an hour.

At 15,000kr - the bus isn't cheap, the overland experience is not as impressive as you'd imagine, if you are on a budget - give it a miss and visit The Golden Circle from the southern side of the country. If you have a thirst to see what the highlands of Iceland look like that can't be quenched then go ahead but be warned - there's not a lot of variation in scenery at all!

Having travelled over Iceland and spent the whole time camping at mediocre campsites where the benefit often was that there was simply no one around to collect money because the season was over and the downside was that the facilities were quite often limited, the camp site at the Reykjavik Youth Hostel came as a pleasant change.

Initially we thought we would stay in the hostel but the prices at 2,000 ISK a person were considerably dearer than the adjacent camp site which is 1,000 kroner. Only open during the summer - the facilities are shared and it's all part of the same thing. We skipped the 1,000 kroner breakfast, instead opting for the nearby supermarket which the receptionists were extremely helpful at directing us to. Wireless internet is available in the hostel.

We did however make use of the laundry facility - at 450 for the washer and 450 for the dryer, it was a bit dear and the large washing machine seemed like something from an American movie in the 70s, down in the basement. It did however give us time to brush up on our ping pong skills which was free on the nearby tennis table.

There's plenty of space here and the barbequeing facilities and eating area is a particular bonus - giving you a chance to cook some of the fish (or whale if you are brave!) from the fresh fish market. It's about 3km out from the centre which is quite far for a hostel but not too bad for an urban campsite. The fat ginger cat will be fondly remembered as a good host! The staff were knowledgeable and welcoming and there is a leisure complex with some great swimming pools and a sauna in close proximity.

Initially we booked a few days but our Polish friends living there, invited us over to stay with them, I lost a small deposit because of this but this was clearly stated in the rules.