Awesome or stupid?

I was asking myself this question the whole week I was in Iceland. Oh ya... I went to Iceland, in the middle of December. So rewind to a couple months ago me and my friends that I met while in Europe, aka my europe friends, wanted to head out on another trip. We were looking at Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and a couple other places. But we ended up buying tickets to Iceland. Super smart right? Well we figured tickets to iceland round trip were usually around 1000$ and we were getting ours for half that so we full sent it. We purchased our airbnb's, hostels and rental car a couple weeks later. We finished up our fall semesters and then headed off on this freezing cold journey. Sunday morning the 14th of December I caught a flight from Stg to Denver. Reunited with my friends and then we headed straight to Reykjavik. We were all wearing our snow boots and heavy coats because we couldn't fit all that in our backpacks. Yes, we only brought backpacks - to last us an entire week in the north pole. Thats just how us European travelers work though. The flight there was awesome. We each had a whole row to ourselves so I slept for about 3 hours and watched a couple movies. 7 hour flight and we made it to Iceland around 6am. 

Once we picked up our rental car we drove straight to the southern coast where our airbnb was. So breakfast = some hot fries I brought from home. As we were heading to our airbnb we stopped at a bakery and further down the road we saw this huge waterfall light up with a spotlight. Of course we pulled over to take a look. Well we thought we had turned down the right side road, but we ended up running into a fence so we had to turn around. Well only one problem - it was a super narrow road with cliffs on each side of it. I was driving and the car was stick shift. Doesn't help that the roads are covered in snow. I WAS FREAKING OUT! I thought for sure I was going to put our brand new rental car over the edge. I had madi in the back and kelsi in the front being my eyes. I did about a 12 point turn to get our car fully turned around and I was so tense after that I was sore! Super scary was to start off the trip, but we survived. We then got back on the main road and took the right side road to take us to the waterfall aka Seljalandsfoss. Also it was about 9:30am when we took these pictures. 

Next stop was the black sand beach. So beautiful and we caught the sunrise at about 11:15. It was crazy because the sun never fully went up in the sky. It was a sunrise from 11am to 1pm then sunset from 1pm to 3pm. 

Reynisfjara beach

Super pretty but it would be quite depressing to live here on this island and never be able to get in the ocean. Its cold all year long, but the waves are also so strong that they can pull you out. There are signs everywhere saying that if you get in the water you can "only survive a few minutes."

Next stop was Dryholaey. 

It was about 30 degrees everyday, some days a little warmer but it was the wind that killed me! The wind made it just miserable at times. This is when the thought would come to mind "Are we awesome for coming here or straight up stupid?" That night we went to dinner at a restaurant by our airbnb and that was the last time we ate out. I had a piece of chicken and some fries and it cost me 21 dollars! We decided to cook our own meals and it saved our wallets! Well that was day one. Lots of exploring and getting to know this beautiful country. Oh and each night we would go northern light hunting. We never saw them while on the south coast which was surprising but we got to see them later in the trip! We woke up the next morning and headed eastward. On the east coast of Iceland is where a lot of the massive glaciers are. Our destinations for the day were glacier lagoon and diamond beach. We also stopped at another glacier along the way to hike and play around for a minute. We were in AWE when we saw these huge masses of ice. 

Next stop was glacier lagoon. This place was unreal. Just a huge lagoon full of chunks of glaciers. Its for the most part frozen over so you can walk on it (its a little slippery though as you can imagine) but there are some holes in the ice where you can see water. 

accurate representation of me 24/7 while on this trip

Then right across the road was Diamond Beach!!

Very very cool. There is a current that takes these glaciers from the lagoon and will deposit them on this beach. So pretty and its obvious why its called diamond beach. It was about a 3 hour drive to this glacier haven so we made the drive back home and spent another night looking for northern lights. 

Day 3 - our last day on the southern coast. We hiked 3-4 miles to see a plane crash site. Fun fact: It crashed in the 70s and everyone survived! Super cool and a great spot for modeling as you can tell by the loads of asian women posing like they're going to be on the next cover of Vogue. It was kinda funny to watch, not gonna lie. 

I don't think they'll ever be on the cover of Vogue, but hey they made an appearance on my blog - thats pretty cool. lol Very entertaining, thats for sure. That night we saw and hiked to the top of Skogafos - the massive, beautiful waterfall that was literally a two minute walk from our airbnb!!

My fingers were FREEZING - hence the beautiful photo

Such a beautiful country!! I love seeing new places!! and meeting new people!! and experiencing new things!! and just full sending it with these girls!! 

More to come I swear, but this is already a long blog so the other half of the trip will be in the next post and it gets even more epic!!!

Also in conclusion this trip was a little of both... awesome AND stupid!