Last week I was invited to join Icelandic Mountain Guides on one of their best selling tours: Glacier walk and Northern Lights. To be honest, I have never been particularly excited about going on one of those glacier tours because a) glaciers are not that exciting to me and b) I’m always worried that I will embarrass myself by being all out of breath and sweaty while the rest of the group glides elegantly over the glacier. I’d rather be sweaty and out of breath in private.
To make a long story short this tour proved me wrong in two ways: Glacier walks are kind of cool and there was no reason to worry that my lack of athleticism would get in my way of enjoying it. I glided – sort of.
Although the tour is called Glacier walk and Northern lights there’s actually more to it than that. We stopped at the ever amazing Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss waterfalls, checked out Skógar Museum (which I loved!), did our thing on the glacier and had dinner together before we went off to hunt for the northern lights. I always think it’s good when people feel like they’ve got more than they bargained for and that’s exactly how one of my fellow travelers, a avid knitter from Northern Ireland, put it after our visit to Skógar museum. The museum guide was excellent and the founder of the museum, Þórður (who will turn 93 in April!), charmed everyone’s socks off with his organ playing and horse hair and wool spinning. Great place.
I must say that I really enjoyed this tour. I liked the fact that it didn’t start terribly early (I was picked up around 11:30) and I really liked the fact that despite a lot of signups Icelandic Mountain Guides decided to keep things small and personal by dividing the whole group into two cars with two different guides. The two guides even took us to two different parts of the glacier so it never felt over crowded. The guide was nice, the lamb soup we had for dinner was nice and even though the chances of seeing the northern lights for the nigh were almost non-existing, I appreciated the guide’s best attempts to find them anyway. Which ultimately led to the one northern lights photo above.
The best thing about small groups, especially for those who travel on their own, is the fact that it doesn’t take long for people to start chatting to each other and before you know it you kind of feel like you’re just on a nice road trip with your buddies and not a tour bus full of strangers. Maybe not your best buddies but friendly faces at least. And for anyone who’s worried, like I kind of was, that you’re going to have to be rescued from the glacier by helicopter due to exhaustion and seriously injured ego (from all the huffing and puffing, you know): Snap out of it. You can totally do this and what’s more – you’ll enjoy it!
A surprisingly full day trip, B-type friendly due to late pick up, and a great way to save time by combining two tours in one. A plus for efficiency!