Wander- & Trekking-Touren

We joined the 8-day tour with our guide Svein in March, hunting for amazing Aurora and beautiful landscapes. In the end, I left my camera on the minibus. Svein was so kind to send it back to me. I was really appreciate it.

I really want to take the time to write a proper review for this awesome tour. I just got back home to the USA last night, and am off again tomorrow on a business trip to TX, so this has to be brief right now! It's not difficult to give this tour 5 stars ! Our guide, Olafur Valtyr Rognvaldsson (better and more easily known as OLI) was awesome! He kept us entertained throughout the tour, and was a font of all knowledge relating to Iceland and its heritage. He was also our driver (we did not have both a driver and a guide, Oli did double duty) and we felt very safe with him driving through the snow and rain. I was glad I was not driving in that! Our minibus seated 20, and there were 18 of us on the tour, so it was a little snug in the bus, but not too bad. (The worst part was the couple who kept eating dried fish - the smell of very fishy dried fish in a warm bus was a little nauseating to say the least!) Oli was pretty good at keeping us on schedule, and was very flexible in moving things around so that we were able to see all the major sites in reasonably good weather. We did the Ice Cave Walk on the second day rather than the third day to take advantage of the fact that it was the end of the season and it would be closing on our last day. We also went to a different glacier from the original one on our schedule because the snow was coming down thick and fast on the one we were supposed to climb and it would not have been a pleasant trek. We had an awesome guide for the glacier walk - he made sure we were all safe, and gave us lots of information about the glacier. We also had the opportunity to sample nature's 'champagne' - 700yr old crystal clear ice! Big G (our guide) climbed up a ways to hack out some clean and clear ice for us to try. We were glad of it at that point, as the climb up the glacier left us all hot and sweaty, despite the cool weather! All of the areas we visited were outstanding. The waterfalls, the beaches, the national parks were spectacular and we had plenty of time at each to enjoy the sites. The Geyser was interesting ... I expected something like Old Faithful, but it was a much tamer version! Still fun, though! One of the most fun parts of the trip was when Oli took us to a 'secret' waterfall - we waded through a stream and climbed over rocks to get through an opening and when we entered through the gap in the rocks, there was a fantastic waterfall hidden from the road. Really cool way to end our tour! Oli also took us to see the Icelandic horses, which wasn't technically a part of the tour, but was a testament to his flexibility and him wanting us to have a great experience. He also pointed out a great place to see the Aurora, but unfortunately, we had cloud both nights and so we were not able to view that natural phenomenon. Although we were there at the beginning of April, it was still pretty chilly in the mornings and evenings, and when the wind blew it was bitingly cold! I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the two hotels we stayed in. Both were very clean, and while the rooms were small, modern and minimalist, they were very comfortable. Be warned, though, that the food in the hotels is VERY expensive! We were a captive audience at the first hotel and dinner was $US44 a person - a small bbq chicken breast, three boiled potatoes and a scoop of boiled vegetables!! Tasty, but extortionately priced for what really could only be described as Diner food. The second hotel, in Hofn, was expensive too, but the food was stellar and much better value than the first hotel. Regardless, both hotels were very nice and food in Iceland is very expensive everywhere. The breakfasts in both hotels were very nice and you could certainly eat a substantial amount to keep you going throughout the day. I would, without a shadow of doubt, recommend this tour if you want to experience Iceland at its best. Our guide, Oli, was excellent and from what I am reading from other reviews, so are all the other guides used by Aurora Hunters. But, of course, we think we got the best one!!! Thanks to Oli (Olafur Valtyr Rognvaldsson - I sure hope I spelled that correctly!) we had a fantastic trip.

Our family of 5 really enjoyed this tour. The views were fantastic and climbing the glacier was so much fun. The guides even had us racing at the end. Highly recommended, we all had a blast!

My husband & I visited Iceland on our honeymoon. Tröll Expeditions' glacier hike & ice climbing experience was by far the highlight of our trip! Brynjar, our guide, was really awesome, funny and friendly. He was focused on safety and even gave us tips on how to take good photos of the northern lights. We had a group of only 4 people and climbed up two different ice walls - both incredible. The glacier hike consisted of us looking at crevices, the scenery and Brynjar even took us into 2 ice caves - one was almost fully melted and the other was still more-or-less there. Seeing a blue ice cave was not supposed to be included in our tour but Brynjar went the extra mile to make our tour amazing. An unforgettable experience in a beautiful country. Thank you Guide to Iceland for making the search & booking process so easy - you were very quick to answer my questions via email, which ultimately helped us make the decision to go with this tour. Thank Tröll Expeditions for the tour - I would easily do it again!

This was a great trip, Francisco at Guide to Iceland was a great help and answered a whole bunch of random questions from us over the course of planning our trip. All of the tours and accommodations went nice and smoothly. We went with the mid-range hotel options and were placed in the Hotel Klettur in Reykjavik which was an awesome location. It was just a 2 or 3 block walk down to the main shopping/dining street and all of the tour buses picked us up right in front of the hotel (as opposed to meeting at a bus stop like it seemed some of the other hotels had to do). Our kids had really pushed for the high-end hotel option, but I think we picked the right one - we didn't fly to Iceland to have a fancy hotel experience after all. We went on 2 over night trips with Troll Expeditions. The buses were nice, though the "south coast tour" involved a lot more time sitting in the bus than I expected (we were driving through a nasty storm both days) but was worth it. I think the only mistake we made was opting for the northern lights by boat trip. We had figured that a boat would have more freedom to move around and find clear skies, but we basically motored out of the harbor and then made a couple of big circles in the same place for a while, all the time socked in by clouds. I think we'll try a mini-bus northern lights tour on our next visit, other travelers generally gave them more positive reviews.