Advertisement
Published: August 28th 2018
Edit Blog Post
After the crowds of the Golden Circle we were looking for a place where crowds wouldn't be. Our plan had been to go back to Reykjavik because it is the capital city and we hadn't had much of a look around. Or we could have a look at Akranes, another place that looked good that we had skipped in our run from the rain on our first visit to Reykjavik.
Unfortunately, Reykjavik has just one camping area, Reykjavik Camping, and it is large, capacity 900, full of people who have been travelling for a couple of weeks or are just setting up. Similar minimal amenities to most camping areas. Crowds at attractions are one thing, waiting for a shower in a long queue, that is another. We decided to see how Akranes was going.
Akranes is an easy seaside town 50km - provided you use the tunnel - from Reykjavik. Our kilometre allowance was starting to receive attention so we didn't want to stray too far from the drop off point for the vehicle.
This town's first settlers came from Ireland and there is an annual festival - the Irish Days Festival - that is held at the
beginning of July every year.
There is a swimming pool fed by water pumped in from Deildartunuhver, the most powerful thermal spring in Europe and that sounded OK as well.
We drove in, camped, found we had no gas and went to obtain a replacement bottle. Two different service stations supplied different bottles. We exchanged for the one that looked like ours. It connected but we simply couldn't get the gas to come through. I had a look at it, and while it actually connected, the internals of the connection looked wrong. We rang the hire company for advice and were told that there had been problems before with this camper so, if we were in the area then we should drop in. What's 50km between friends? Nothing when you consider the option was no heat and no cooked food. No heating was not an option.
The hire company was good when we came to an agreement that the connection could not let gas through because the pin had nothing to push against. This discussion took place in English, Russian and perhaps Icelandic. In the end explicit sign language reigned supreme. They replaced the bottle we had
for an older type and it all worked. We are still not clear where we might have found such a bottle but that is a question for another day.
We found a camp at Sandgerdi out near Keflavik that seemed pretty good. It was, until it filled to breaking point later in the evening and night. Good again after they left the next day - not too early as this is Iceland and most things do not get moving until 10am. High on our agenda was doing some laundry so that we didn't arrive at our next country with bags full of dirty clothes. There was a great washing machine and drier in this camping area. While it was behind a locked door it did have a sign on it saying we could use it for 500 kroner. Tried to arrange it but the camp manager person didn't come through.
We decided to give Reyjkavik a day and went to have a look at the centre. Found a good place to park. The machine wouldn't take our money but eventually we read the small print and found it was free on Sunday. A good omen. Nothing else has
been free, anywhere. The main shopping street was OK. Lots of tourist shops and the Prime Minister's residence, which looked like a good place to live.
We decided to go back out to Akranes and spend possibly 2 nights getting everything - clothes, camper and vehicle - all cleaned up for hand back. Akranes also filled up a bit at night but not to the point of bursting. Akranes is a nice little place and a very good place to do the end of tour clean up. The washing machine cost 400 kroner for 120 minutes and the drier the same. It rained almost all of the time but was lovely anyway. Asta, the camp manager ran one of the friendliest, best located and best run campgrounds we had come across.
We also knew, from the search for gas bottles a few days earlier, that several of the service stations in Akranes had vacuum cleaners as well as the brooms attached to hoses, so that we could clean the vehicle.
So, now the camper is back in the hands of Camper Iceland. Returned pristine and sparkling. No problems on return and we will now move on to
the Netherlands and France.
We will put up a post as soon as we can providing a summary of Iceland partly so we remember and partly for those others who are researching this lovely, little expensive country.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.446s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 39; qc: 140; dbt: 0.1837s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.6mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Creativity in Action
Well done!