Iceland Express

2 Reviews

Excellent

50%

Good

0%

Average

50%

Rather Poor

0%

Bad

0%

• 

  Jenn
  Written on November 24, 2017

  5.0 - Excellent

  Have used Intrepid for over 7 trips and loved every single one ran by them exclusively. Amazing local guides and staff.

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• PH

  Peter
  Written on July 27, 2017

  2.5 - Average

  This is a very short tour of Iceland using basic accommodation, so it is cheap. If I had my choice again, I'd do a slightly longer more up market tour. The airport is about an hour's drive from Reykjavik, so we took a return ticket on the Fly-bus, which I booked on our incoming Icelandair flight. We met our guide and tour group at 6pm in a cheap guest house in Reykjavik. The guide seemed a bit disorganised but we were all allocated rooms; the bathrooms were shared, as they were throughout the trip. Some guest rooms were also shared but couples did not share. We were taken to dinner at our own cost. Iceland is VERY expensive, so almost everyone ordered pizza, which was still expensive. There was some confusion about our meeting place the next morning but we all got there OK, eventually. Our 16 seater bus was comfortable enough but fully packed with just enough room for our day packs; all other luggage was in a trailer. We visited 4 excellent sites the first day and the guide/driver was quite knowledgeable but not a good presenter; her humour and personal stories were a bit adolescent for my taste. We stopped somewhere each day for lunch which was expensive even if it was just a petrol station or a supermarket. The guide stopped at ATMs, liquor stores and supermarkets so people could stock up because our accommodation was always in a remote location, several kometres or miles from a town. That meant that you either brought food from the supermarket or are at the accommodation dining room. We did this on the second night and the food was REALLY expensive and quite ordinary; some baked lamb, cheesy potatoes and a mixed veg dish. We found it very unimpressive. We shared a cottage with another couple for 2 nights. The cottage was quite large but the bedrooms and shared bathroom were tiny; we couldn't even get our suitcases into our room and there was no place even to put a toiletries bag in our room.. we coped but it wasn't comfortable Other guests probably coped better than us because they had less luggage, like backpacks, but we're going on a 12 day cruise after Iceland, so we had 13 and 17 kilogram suitcases​; not huge but bulky enough. When we arrived at our accommodation, we were left to drag our cases up a steep, rock strewn path and over a damp grassy slope; not impressed. The guide/driver was unable to reverse the bus and trailer, so we often had to walk significant distances to get to our evening meal or to get to breakfast which was an expensive continental breakfast. On one occasion, three of us had to walk 1.5 kms, say about a mile, there and back to pay for breakfast because the guide couldn't drive us there. Venues we visited in day 2 and 3 were great; some folks did optional excursions like a boat ride on a glacier lake or a walk on a glacier. These were, you guessed it, very expensive. If you didn't go on these, there was little else to do after you'd walked around the edge of the lake or the edge of the glacier. I think most people found the glacier boat trip a bit of a dud. Day three venues were good but the day involved a log of driving and late return to Reykjavik. Most of the guests, especially the younger ones, seemed to enjoy the trip, apart from the expense. I enjoyed it too but couldn't realty recommend it.

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