Day 1 - 2.8. Prague-Berlin-Reykjavik

Ivo arrived first directly from Warsaw after few hours of last emails and conf calls I had pleasure to show him a local pub in our village and introduce Kofola drink. Then last shopping to buy necessary  food and equipment for our trip. Jirka arrived at 2 p.m., after a quick check with Lufthansa we had to slightly repack our backpacks in order to reach maximum weight of 23kg each. Biggest issue was food. At 3 p.m. we finally left my house, Czech and German highways were without any surprises so we reached Berlin Tegel airport shortly before 7 p.m.

Ready to go, Tegel Berlin

After baggage drop off we took steaks and biers in Red Baron restaurant. Almost 4 hour flight was really exhausting, curry wurst served as dinner also didn’t help to survive in a full airplane. Nevertheless we touched the ground in Keflavik at 0:30 a.m. After arrival we had to summon our car rent company ATAK, nobody was waiting for us. 15 minutes after call a driver finally arrived and took us to their office. It took 1 minute drive and costs 20 EUR – perhaps most expensive taxi ever. That’s service called car pick up and drop off at the airport (20 EUR each way). Obviously this was just first example how Iceland will be expensive. Anyway after another 20 minutes of paper work we were quite sure that we are first customers served by this guy, he didn’t explain anything, only asked for sign off and then finally brought the car, no explanation, no word. At least we got, what was promissed, quite a new car. Happy that we have the car we jumped into our Grand Vitara and headed to Reykjavik. Around 2 p.m. we parked in front of our Radisson 1919. Quick showers and quickly to bed.

Night drive to Reykjavik

Reading this blog please understand:

1. Each day is logged with number and date
2. At bottom of each day you can find how many kilometres we drove, detailed maps with summary you can find here
3. Some days includes videos, rest videos you can find here
4. At the end I added few articles summarizing trip and experience

Drive 55km, road 41.

Cars, CARS, cars !!!

Car is the key tool on Iceland, you can read many different articles which car, when and where to use. We dont want to make compromises so we go for 4WD car in order to get anywhere.
I found basicaly several options where to rent car:

• pick one of many global rentals (Sixt, Hertz, Budget, Avis etc.)
• use local Czech travel agency Periscope
• use Icelandic agency http://www.carrentals.is/

First option is out almost immediately, prices are totaly out of bounds. For 8,5 days rental you can pay anything between 1800 and 3000 euro. Forget that your loyalty card will help you, savings are insignificant. Final choice had been made between Periscope and Carrentals.is. Prices were almost the same, arround 1200 euro. Be ready that each extra service means extra fee: pick up/drop off at Keflavik airport, extra driver etc.
Final decision has been made, we should drive Suzuki Grand Vitara provided by Nordic Holidays Car Rental (via carrentals.is). Price is 1300 euro including SCDW, pickup and drop off v Keflaviku and gravel protection.