Five days on Iceland's south coast: the postcard half of the country
Two nights in Vik and two in Hofn, driving east from Reykjavik on day one and back on day five, with about 900 km of Route 1 in between.
- Length
- 5 days, 4 nights
- Where you stay
- Vík í Mýrdal, Höfn
- Places
- 12 across 5 days
The strip of coast between Reykjavik and Hofn is where most people's photographs of Iceland come from. Route 1 runs along the bottom of a wall of old sea cliffs with waterfalls coming off it, crosses black deserts of glacial sand, and finishes among the tongues of Vatnajokull with icebergs floating in a lagoon at the end.
It is also the part of the country you can do without any special driving. The road is paved the whole way, the sights are signposted, and the longest single stretch is under three hours. What eats the time is stopping, which is the point.
Splitting the coast between Vik and Hofn keeps every driving day short enough to enjoy. The alternative, staying in Reykjavik and coming out on day trips, means five hours in a coach for four hours of coast, and nobody who has done it recommends it twice.
Highlights
- The path behind Seljalandsfoss, and the quieter fall hidden in a gorge half an hour east
- Walking onto Solheimajokull with crampons and a guide, in the middle of a Tuesday
- Reynisfjara's basalt columns and sea stacks at five in the afternoon, once the coaches have gone
- Icebergs turning over in Jokulsarlon, and the ones stranded on the black sand across the road
- Langoustine in Hofn, landed by the boats you can see from the table
Where to stay
Vik i Myrdal, two nights
A village of about 300 people with a red-roofed church on a green hill, sat on the black sand under Myrdalsjokull and its volcano Katla. Everything worth stopping for on the western half of this coast is within 40 km of it.
Two nights means the waterfalls get the drive out and the beach, the glacier and the village get a day of their own without either being rushed.
Hofn, two nights
About 208 km from Vík í Mýrdal.
A working fishing town of about 2,000 people on a shallow lagoon in the southeast corner, with Europe's largest glacier filling the sky behind it and langoustine on every menu.
The lagoon at Jokulsarlon is 50 km back west, which is the argument for two nights rather than one: you see it on the way in and again the next morning before the coaches arrive.
Day by day
Day 1 in Vík í Mýrdal
East from Reykjavik: Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss and the fall in the gorge
Get out of the city early, because everything today is on the same 100 km of Route 1 and all of it is busier after ten. Past Selfoss the farmland opens out, the cliffs of the old coastline rise on your left, and the waterfalls start.
Three falls in a day sounds like a lot and is not: they are all off the road, all free to see, and the third one takes a walk that most people driving past never make.
- 09:45
Seljalandsfoss
NatureA 60 metre thread of water dropping clear of the cliff, with a path that goes round the back of it and returns you soaked. Waterproofs and a hood, phone in a pocket, and shoes with some grip: the last few metres are wet rock. Free to visit, paid car park.
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- 12:00
Skógafoss
NatureThirty kilometres on, and a different kind of fall: 60 metres tall, 25 wide, dropping in one heavy curtain off the river Skoga, protected since 1987. Stand at the base until the spray makes you retreat, then take the steel staircase up the side for the view back along the coast.
- 13:30
Lunch at Skogar
EatThere are a couple of cafes by the falls and a hotel restaurant, and this is the last reliable hot food before Vik.
- 14:45
Kvernufoss
NatureTwenty minutes' walk up the gorge behind the folk museum next door, a 30 metre fall in a cleft that almost nobody bothers with. You can walk behind this one too, in summer, and you will probably have it to yourself.
With more time: The folk museum at Skogar is one of the best of its kind in the country, with turf houses, a fishing boat and 13 buildings' worth of how people lived here before the road. Allow ninety minutes and drop the third waterfall to make room.
Day 2 in Vík í Mýrdal
Solheimajokull, the black beach and molten rock in the evening
The glacier first, because the guided walks go in the morning and the ice is the thing nobody expects to be able to do on a normal day off. Solheimajokull comes down off Myrdalsjokull to within a few kilometres of Route 1, and the lagoon at its foot has grown visibly within living memory.
Reynisfjara is better late, once the coaches have moved on and the light is coming in low along the stacks. The evening after is the one indoor thing on this coast that is worth booking.
- 09:15
Sólheimajökull
NatureThe most accessible glacier tongue on the south coast, a short side road off Route 1 and a fifteen minute walk from the car park to the water at its foot. Guided walks with crampons leave from here most mornings and take two to three hours. The retreat is easy to see: the markers showing where the ice reached are a long way behind it.
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- 14:00
Late lunch in Vik
EatThe village has a handful of places along the main road doing soup, lamb and pizza. All of them are full between one and two and empty at three.
- 16:00
Black Sand Beach
VisitBlack volcanic sand, a cliff of hexagonal basalt you can climb a couple of steps of, and the Reynisdrangar stacks standing in the sea offshore. Puffins nest on the headland from May to August. The waves are the danger here and they are not exaggerated: stay high on the beach and never turn your back on the sea.
- 19:00
Lava Show
VisitIn the village, a show that superheats real basalt to around 1,100 degrees and pours it out glowing a couple of metres from the front row. You feel the heat from across the room. Tickets go online and the evening slots sell out first.
With more time: The village pool is a few euros, geothermal and outdoors, and half an hour in it after the beach is the local answer to a cold afternoon. If you would rather have a longer walk, the DC-3 wreck on Solheimasandur is a flat 4 km each way across black sand, with nothing whatever to look at on the way.
Day 3 in Höfn
The sand plains, a mossy canyon and the icebergs at Jokulsarlon
The 270 km to Hofn is the best driving day of the five. Past Kirkjubaejarklaustur the road runs out onto the outwash plains, flat grey deserts of sand laid down by floods from under the ice cap, with Vatnajokull sitting above them the whole way.
The lagoon is the target and it is worth arriving at with time in hand. Ice breaks off the glacier at its head, drifts down over a day or two, and goes out through a short channel to the sea. What the tide brings back grounds on the black sand on the far side of the road, which is why nobody leaves without crossing it.
- 09:45
Coffee at Kirkjubaejarklaustur
EatThe last village before the sand plains, with a petrol station, a bakery and not much else. Fill the tank here whatever the gauge says.
- 11:30
Skeiðarársandur
VisitThe great sand plain south of Vatnajokull, twenty minutes of flat grey nothing with the ice cap above it. Stop at the twisted bridge girders standing beside the road: they are what a flood from an eruption under the glacier did to the ring road in 1996, left where they landed.
- 13:00
Múlagljúfur Canyon
VisitAn unmarked track off Route 1 west of the glacier stops leads to a canyon of green moss, sheer walls and a waterfall at the head of it. The walk is about 45 minutes each way over rough, boggy ground, which keeps the numbers down. Boots, and not in the dark.
- 16:45
Jökulsárlón
NatureA lagoon of drifting icebergs that did not exist a century ago and now runs to a couple of hundred metres deep, with seals working the channel where it meets the sea. Zodiac and amphibious boats run from spring to autumn and need booking; walking the shore is free and nearly as good. Cross the road afterwards for the ice stranded on the beach.
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With more time: Skaftafell, an hour before the lagoon, is the walking end of the national park: a marked path climbs in about an hour to a waterfall framed by black basalt columns, with a viewpoint over the glacier tongue on the way. Take it in place of the canyon if you want a made path under your feet.
Day 4 in Höfn
A writer's farm, the town pool and langoustine on the harbour
Hofn is not a sightseeing town, which after three days of driving is the right thing for it to be. The morning goes back west along the narrow shelf of farmland between the glacier and the sea, where the museums are small and the mountains behind them are the highest in Iceland.
Then back to town for the two things it does properly: a pool nobody else is in, and shellfish landed a hundred metres from the table.
- 10:00
Þórbergssetur
CultureAt the farm of Hali, 40 km west, a museum built for the writer Thorbergur Thordarson with a facade made to look like a shelf of giant books. Half of it is his life, half is how anybody farmed a strip of land this narrow with a glacier above it. Better than it sounds, and there is a decent restaurant attached.
- 15:00
Swimming pool
VisitThe town pool, geothermal and outdoors, considerably better than a town of 2,000 people has any right to expect, and a few euros to get in. Shower properly and without a swimsuit before you go in, which is the rule everywhere in Iceland and is enforced.
- 19:00
Humarhöfnin
EatThe lobster house by the harbour, in an old timber building, serving the langoustine the town lives on with very little done to it. Officially summer only, so ring rather than turn up in the shoulder season, and book a table either way.
With more time: If the weather is against you, the town has a small art museum showing the municipal collection and local painters, and a private rock and mineral collection housed in the old swimming pool, which is as odd as that sounds and takes twenty minutes.
Day 5 in Höfn
The harbour museum, then the long road west
It is six hours back to Keflavik, so this is a driving day with one thing in front of it. The town museum by the harbour opens early and takes forty minutes, which is exactly the right amount before a long stretch of road.
Coming back the way you came is not the penalty it sounds. The light is different, the sand plains look nothing like they did on Wednesday, and everything you drove past the first time is on your left.
- 09:30
Gamlabúð Folk Museum
CultureThe local museum in a white timber warehouse that was moved down to the harbour, covering life here between 1850 and 1950. Small, cheap and clear eyed about how hard this coast was to live on before the road came.
- 10:30
Drive west on Route 1
TravelAbout 460 km to the airport with fuel and food at Kirkjubaejarklaustur, Vik and Selfoss. Leave seven hours before the flight, not six.
With more time: With an evening flight there is room for one more stop: the plains east of Vik have several signed tracks down to the sea, and any of them puts you alone on twenty kilometres of black beach for half an hour.
Before you go
The drive out and back
Keflavik to Vik is about 220 km and takes three hours without stopping, which nobody does. From Vik to Hofn is 270 km, and from Hofn back to the airport is a solid six hours, so the last day is a driving day and should be planned as one.
A small two wheel drive car is enough for all of this in summer. Take the gravel and the sand and ash waivers anyway: the wind here blows grit hard enough to pit a windscreen and the standard cover excludes it.
In winter you want four wheel drive, and you want to look at road.is before every leg. The south coast closes for wind more often than for snow, and when it closes it stays closed for hours.
Where to sleep
Vik has a few hundred beds and several thousand visitors a day passing through, so book early or end up in a farm guesthouse 40 km away, which is not a disaster but adds an hour to every morning.
Hofn is bigger and easier, and the guesthouses out along the coast towards the glacier are often better value than the hotels in town.
Neither place has much in the way of shops. Buy food in Selfoss or Hvolsvollur on the way out if you are self catering, because the village supermarkets are small and shut early.
Safety on this stretch
The waves at Reynisfjara have killed visitors, more than once. They run far higher up the sand than the previous ten did and the undertow takes people out fast. Stay well back from the water, watch the sea rather than your phone, and keep hold of children.
Do not walk onto a glacier without a guide and crampons. The edges are rotten, the crevasses are covered, and the tongues here are moving and melting fast.
Single lane bridges are frequent between Vik and Hofn. Whoever reaches the bridge first goes, and the sign comes a long way before it.
When to come
June to August gives long light, every road open and the puffins on the cliffs, along with full car parks from ten in the morning. Being at the big waterfalls before nine or after five is the whole difference.
November to March is the ice cave season, because the natural caves in the glaciers are only safe when the meltwater has stopped. It is also aurora season, and daylight is down to four or five hours, which means one sight a day.
The south coast rewards being early and being late. The same waterfall at half past eight and at half past one is two different places, and the beach after the last coach has left is worth rearranging a day for.
If you find yourself with an extra day, spend it at Hofn rather than adding another stop. The road east from there into the fjords is a different trip, and it deserves more than an afternoon.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is five days enough for the south coast?
- For Reykjavik to Hofn and back, yes, comfortably. Three days means seeing the waterfalls and the beach and turning round before the lagoon, which is the half most people regret missing. Seven would let you add Landmannalaugar or the Westman Islands rather than just driving further.
- Could I do this from Reykjavik as day trips?
- Only the first part of it. Jokulsarlon is 380 km from the capital, so a day trip there is fourteen hours with about ninety minutes at the lagoon. The whole point of sleeping in Vik and Hofn is that the driving happens between sights instead of around them.
- Do I need a four wheel drive?
- Not from May to September. Everything here is on paved road or a short gravel spur, and a small car is cheaper to hire and to fuel. From October, take the four wheel drive and the studded tyres, and treat the forecast as part of the plan.
- When can I go inside an ice cave?
- The natural caves are a winter thing, roughly November to March, because they are only stable once the melt has stopped. Outside those months the tours use a man made tunnel or a cave in the Katla glacier reached by a modified truck, both of which run all year and neither of which looks quite like the photographs.
- How much driving is it?
- Around 900 km all told: three hours out on day one, three hours to Hofn on day three, six hours back on day five, and short hops in between. Two of the five days involve almost no driving at all.
- Can I change the nights around?
- Copy it into JourneyComposer and the five days arrive as an editable plan with the drives already drawn, so moving a night from Hofn to Vik takes a moment.