One of my highlight trips in 2019 was definitely Iceland! Iceland is one of my bucket lists and since I was gonna be-3 hours-flight-away from Islandia, I committed to find ways to go there, in a student budget. I have read many blogs that a trip to Iceland can be really expensive, especially in food and accommodation, which I’d say it’s true.
But you know what? I spent roughly £160 for my 4D3N trip in Iceland! How come? I’ll spill my tips in this post! I’ll also post my Iceland itinerary in different post.
The tips that I write here were initially made by Ivy, my travel partner, and I add more details in each point. So without further due, here are the tips!
Hunt the Budget Tickets EARLY
If you can get the cheap airline tickets to Reykjavik, it would be really helpful! Leverage the discount shopping period like Black Friday, Boxing Day or New Year. A lot of airlines participated in this special season too. I got a return ticket Luton-Reykjavik for £51 by Wizz Air, included one baggage. My trip was in March 2019 where I bought the ticket on early January, I guess it was still in New Year discount season. The usual ticket price is around £150 — it’s a 3 hours flight, so I was really lucky to get such a cheap ticket for Iceland.
If you want to hunt the aurora, you need to come around November to March. However, be alert for peak season (Christmas and New Year) as the ticket would go up really high. Come in February or March as the tickets would go “normal” again.
Do the Trip in Group
This one is pretty obvious. If you want to press your budget for Iceland, you need to do the trip in group. Sharing the cost of hostel, car and sometimes food would help you to stay on budget. Besides that, travel in a group would help you to get more cooler and fancy pictures of you in the land of the Gods (I hope there is at least one person who are able to take a great pic or has a cool camera! :p) No worry to bring selfie stick or shamelessly ask someone to take picture of you. In my trip, it was only me who didn’t bring camera as the other 4 girls are really advanced in taking pictures (and yes, their gear was also cool!)
My advise for the group is to make an agreed itinerary before you start the trip. An agreed itinerary includes the plan B and plan C, if something happens along the way, which spots or activities we should give up to be able to visit other places? Don’t waste the time during the journey deciding the plan B because you’re supposed to enjoy the beauty of Iceland’s landscape. In my case, there was a strong storm expected to come around 10 am – 4pm in some area, hence we need to rearrange the itinerary and in the end we decided to let go the Black Sand Beach.
Hire a Car
If you travel in a group, especially 4 to 5, it is lot cheaper to hire a car. If you can drive manual gear, it’s even cheaper. The total cost of automatic car, included GPS and all-risk insurance for 4 days was 33.770 ISK or around £212. The total gasoline for 4 days trip was £145. We divided to 5 people which resulted to £72 per person. With £72, we were safe and flexible with the time, it carried us from South West, Midlands, and South East of Iceland which majority of attractions are located.
I recommended Blue Car Rental for car hire as it is one of the cheapest options in Reykjavik, compare to the big names (Avis, Kayak or Hertz). The rating is also 4.2/5 in Google. They only need my credit card information for the deposit, but they didn’t deduct any amount. I got a KIA car, with GPS and winter gear. I strongly recommend to get the GPS and confirm it is working while you pick up the car. Although 3 UK can be used in Reykjavik however the signal is not reliable evenly in the whole region hence Google Maps couldn’t be accessed. You don’t want to get troubled by getting lost in snowy and quiet roads of Icelands, do you?
Cook and Bring Lunch Box
Eating out in Iceland is expensive, really. Find the accommodation that allows you cook. After that, pack it in your lunch box. We really don’t mind to eat less quality food (it’s just for four days anyway) so we brought out survival/comfort food such as Indomie, Abon, fried rice seasoning, Uncle Ben’s pasta sauce, etc. In Iceland, we still need to buy some groceries such as eggs, milk, rice, etc so we don’t spend it for eating out. For breakfast, we usually had bread, eggs and milk. Lunch, we cooked pasta or fried rice. And dinner, usually indomie, yoghurt, fruits, etc. Don’t forget to buy fruits for snacks too. We woke up quite early to cook the lunch and we don’t mind to eat the cold lunch either hehe. We were only eating out for one time at KFC. Imo KFC in Indonesia still tastes better haha.
Don’t forget to bring your water bottle! Just like in the UK, a packaged water bottle is quite expensive in Iceland. Just refill your bottle with tap water before heading out for the trip.
Before heading out to tourism places, make sure you refill your “ammunition” of snacks, water and gasoline. When you still in Reykjavik, go to convenience store (I recommend Bonus, it’s like Aldi of Iceland), reload the fuel, and go to toilet. It’s harder to find these places when you are out of Reykjavik, truly. And if you found one, back to the basic of Iceland, it’s expensive :’D
Don’t Expect Shopping
While in Reykjavik there are MANY cute places and stuffs, yess it was really tempting but hold your desire to spend your money here. According to one of my trip mates, everything is more expensive than the rest of Europe. Buy souvenirs is fine but maybe not for shopping. This is just to help you to stick with your budget 🙂
Use Your Network
Hostel/accommodation can be really expensive. My group was really lucky because we use our connection and it happened that there was an Indonesian family who willing to host us during the trip. Indonesians living in Iceland are less than 10 people, so they were even happier to see fellow Indonesians 🙂 We were really blessed to get to know the most kindhearted family we met in Iceland. If you have friends in Iceland, stay with your friends would definitely help!
laurensia.saraswati 