{"id":25221,"date":"2026-09-27T09:51:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T09:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/?p=25221"},"modified":"2026-09-27T09:51:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T09:51:52","slug":"landing-in-iceland-and-driving-to-langjokull-glacier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/2026\/09\/27\/landing-in-iceland-and-driving-to-langjokull-glacier\/","title":{"rendered":"Landing in Iceland and Driving to Langj\u00f6kull Glacier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wednesday, May 13 \u2013 The sunrise was slightly visible over the clouds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here were a couple shots of Iceland taken from the plane as we made our descent. It looked barren. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even though our flight had left late<\/a>, it landed a little early, at 0615 local time (which was 0215 to our body clocks). Eric was relieved — he’d been worried about arriving late and missing his tour. Instead of pulling up to a terminal, they parked on the tarmac and had us deplane from the back, so we were one of the first off. We went down the covered steps to the tarmac and it was only a a few more steps to the waiting bus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We were among the people to exit the bus at the terminal, so we had to wait in a very long passport control line. We were also in the slowest moving line of all. When we finally got through passport control, we went down to baggage claim. We had to walk through the duty free shop to get to baggage claim, which felt more like we were exiting a ride at a theme park than being in an airport. In good news, our bags were waiting for us on the carousel, so we grabbed them and quickly headed outside and made a beeline for the taxi stand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 50 km (31-mile) stretch between the airport and Reykjav\u00edk, the biggest city in Iceland, was a bit desolate. It reminded us of driving in the desert in Nevada and Arizona. The landscape was mostly flat. Most of the land looked like it was probably grass fields, but the grass was still in hibernation for winter, so the dead grass almost looked like the dusty desert dirt (though we could see the earth under the grass was black). There was a stretch that was solid black; we surmised that it had been covered in a recent lava flow field. There were a few lone roads that seemed to go to nowhere here and there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we neared the city, we saw a lot of industrial type buildings and some houses. The architecture quickly evolved to mostly blocky apartment buildings. As we neared the downtown area, the skyline was dominated by large high rise buildings, with several large buildings currently under construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our taxi driver followed all the rules carefully \u2013 he obeyed the speed limit as all the other cars zoomed by us on the freeway, slowed for men at work signs even though no one was working on the roads, stopped for yellow lights when it probably would have been safer to speed up and go through the light so that the car behind had more room to stop, etc\u2026 Eric was frustrated and having a hard time keeping the frustration contained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we finally pulled up to The Harpa building in the heart of downtown, Eric was relieved to see the tour bus was at the designated meeting spot. He’d barely made, but he’d made it! He exited the taxi and ran to the tour bus. The reason we’d come to Iceland was so Eric could attend a conference. This tour was a conference add-on, so everyone on the tour was a part of the conference. Eric was excited about the tour since it sounded super cool, but he was probably more excited about the time to get to know his colleagues before the conference began. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bus drove on a highway through some beautiful vistas and Eric took some pictures along the way. Iceland was living up the hype. The bus driver shared some interested facts about Iceland, such as water and power are very inexpensive and most of the population lives in the capital, Reykjav\u00edk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The bus arrived to the base camp, located near the bottom of Langj\u00f6kull. Everyone on board was transferred to special off-road buses made specifically for traveling in the snow up to the top of the glacier. The road to the glacier was actually a public road, and some people attempted to drive it in cars, but it really was only accessible with an off-road vehicle. The off-road buses had tires that could change their pressure depending on the terrain. During the ride up, he actually fell asleep for 45-minutes. It was a long ride up, in part because it was a lot of miles and in part because the vehicles weren’t moving fast. When the buses finally made it to the top, it was cloudy and quite cold. Here was a quick 360 view where you could see the off-road buses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n