How to hitch-hike in Iceland? 1 day through Snaefellsnes Peninsula.

I wonder how many of you dreamt about going to the incredible island „near” the North Pole? See it’s amazing nature; waterfalls, black beaches, abandoned roads, wild nature and many many more. And also, wanted to explore Iceland lowcost, because as we all know it’s a TOP 10 most expensive country in the world.

My trip to Iceland lasted for around 2 months, many of you may ask why? Sometimes I also wonder how did this happen to be honest. Long story short, last year of Uni, either me nor my friend couldn’t be bothered to spend our whole semester in Poland studying, so we decided to take an opportunity and sign up for an Erasmus Internship Programme. (For those who don’t know - Erasmus can be in a form of a student exchange between EU countries, or an internship where in both cases you get a scholarship from your University). So that’s how we ended up working for 2 months for the Polish Embassy in Iceland, and it was one of the sickest experiences I probably had.

Having not a lot of money, and planning to visit as much of Iceland as possible, first weekend - hitchhiking to one of the most beautiful places in Iceland the Snaefellsnes Peninsula from the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik. The peninsula is most famous for the Snaefellsjokull National Park with a lot of breathtaking cliffs, Black Church in Budir and the Kirkjufell volcano. During this trip we also discovered that Iceland is actually not as small as it seems, and honestly in 2 months we didn’t manage to see everything.

March in Iceland, still quite cold and windy, weather changes 3 times a day (snow storm, rain and suddenly sun! YES IT’S TRUE) we didn’t really know that we would be visualised as two crazy girls trying to catch a quick ride to some place in the middle of nowhere. So first…early in the morning, wake up and go to a road near the highway to catch a ride (even a taxi driver managed to take us for free!!!). We met some amazing people on the way, one of them was a mountain rescuer that dropped us off 1 hour from our first most wanted stop - the black church in Budir.

If you think hitchiking is easy in Iceland you are more than wrong. Even though you may hear that not so long ago the previous president of Iceland took hitchikers and drove them to their dream destination, nowadays it doesn’t really look the same. Till now we think that it was our most lucky day that we managed to get rides so easily, in around 3 hours we managed to get to the first stop without having bigger weather troubles. We had to give up going to the National Park so we went straight to Kirkjufell volcano, but without regrets. It was our first encounter with Icelandic nature so we were inhaling the beauty of the views while catching our stops. The south of peninsula is more occupied by tourists, so it’s easier to catch a stop there than in the North part.

Driving back…well, we found one car with a super nice Canadian who gave us a ride untill the highway started again. And God knows what would have happened if not for him. I think his car was the only visible car on the abandoned roads in the North part of the Peninsula.

All in one, hitchiking in Iceland is more than possible, you just have to mind the month because of the climate. Being stuck in the middle of freezing Iceland - I really don’t reccomend it. But meeting interesting people and getting to know from first hand even more interesting stories about Iceland, I recommend more than anything. After all it’s your decision how you’d like to travel through this country and others. I thought that it’s an interesting topic, because not everyone knows how to start hitchiking and what is the reality of this „sport” ;).

It’s not the end of describing life and touristy places in Iceland. Everything will be on my blog in due time! For all questions you can DM me on instagram, e-mail me or write comments below!

And Have an awesome trip to Iceland!