I woke up in Reykjavik feeling refreshed and ready for adventure. We planned to pick up our rental car and trek out to the southeast coastal town of Vík, about two hours from Reykjavik. In between lies the Golden Circle, which is the most popular tourist area as it’s easily accessed from Reykjavik and contains a few of the country’s best-known natural wonders: waterfalls, lakes, glaciers and geysers.

I was feeling a bit nervous about the rental car, though. I’d booked it just before we left the US from a company called Sad Cars — so named because it provides somewhat beat-up used cars for a fraction of the price of any of Iceland’s competing car rental companies. I found the name adorable and the price tag especially alluring. What do we need some fancy car for anyway? I reasoned. As long as it works!

Well. When I proudly told our Reykjavik hosts Ryan and Joe that we’d rented a “sad car,” their faces fell immediately. “Oh…” they said with a grimace. Reluctantly, they told me that they’d used Sad Cars before, only to get one broken-down clunker, have it replaced for another clunker, then have that one replaced for a third barely functional vehicle. Uh oh. Plus, I realized that I’d forgotten to specify on the form that we needed a car with an automatic transmission, as neither Haider or I could drive stick shift.

On our way to pick up the Sad Car, we met up with a guy named Raz who’d responded to a post of mine on Couchsurfing.com looking for fellow travelers to link up with us and help share the cost of the rental. He’d just arrived in Reykjavik that morning, and he was interested in joining us for this leg of our trip. Luckily, he could drive stick. And even more luckily, our sad car, despite being rusted, dented and thoroughly unglamorous, actually worked just fine.

We set out toward Thingvellir National Park, our first stop on the Golden Circle. Along the way, we couldn’t help but gape at the awe-inspiring scenery around us. Having no idea the incredible amount of beauty yet to be seen, we practically drooled over every last mountain and cliff and tree and river and sheep.

To our great excitement, we passed a hitchhiker on the side of the road and stopped to scoop him up. Sebastien, a French guy, was looking for a ride just down the road to his hostel in Laugarvatn. He’d been in Iceland for two weeks already and would be staying for a third. Though communication was a little difficult — I was the only one who spoke any French at all, which turned out to be pathetically little, and he barely spoke English — we were all high on the thrill of the open road, new friends, and the spontaneity of travel. We could barely understand each other, but the whole time Sebastien was in the car we couldn’t stop laughing at each other’s clumsy attempts to make jokes across the language barrier.

We dropped Sebastien off after just a couple of kilometers and pressed on to our first destination: Geysir. The original geyser (it’s where the word originated) is now mostly dormant, but there are several smaller ones in the area, including one called Strokkur that’s quite active, going off about every five to ten minutes. We paused to touch a stream of water next to a sign that warned of its high temperature (80 to 100 degrees Celsius). It was indeed hot, which felt extremely odd considering that it looked like any normal stream and the day was quite chilly.

We reached the active geyser and joined the throng of tourists waiting for it to go off. The pool of water in front of us bubbled and percolated, occasionally sinking downward in the center and pulsing back up as though gathering its energy. Finally it erupted in a little spray of water maybe six feet high. I was so delighted that I literally shouted “Yay!” while clapping my hands… only to look like a fool a few seconds later when it actually went off with an astonishing thirty-foot column of water that faded into a plume of sulfurous steam.

We opted to enjoy the eruptions rather than being transfixed to our camera screens, so I can only share the before and after shots.

We walked around a bit and stayed to watch a few more spouts, laughing at the tourists who waited with their backs to the damn thing, selfie sticks in the air, just desperate to get their face in an image of the exploding geyser.

Next up was Gullfoss, our first Icelandic waterfall. The powerful falls pour into a massive chasm in the ground, so that they appear from some angles to disappear into the earth. It was amazing from a distance, but we noticed people walking right up to it and realized that there was a path that led all the way to the edge. At first I balked at the idea of walking up it since I was already shivering from the frigid winds and icy spray, but I succumbed to Haider and Raz’s enthusiasm. I’m glad I did — seeing the insane power of the falls close up and watching the thousands upon thousands of gallons of water being swallowed up into the ground was truly an incredible sight.

We set off then for Vík, which turned out to be further away than we’d thought. We spent the long drive getting to know each other. Raz is originally from Nepal, but he’d been living in San Francisco for the past decade after winning the lottery for an American green card. An amazingly well-traveled guy with endless energy, positivity and enthusiasm for spontaneity, Raz clicked with us right away and proved to be a great companion for our first two days on the road.

The scenery changed rapidly outside of our sad car’s windows. Rocky mountains gave way to flat plains dotted with sheep, horses and plastic-wrapped hay bales. Eventually, we spotted a glacier in the distance (Eyjafjallajökull, one of the smallest of Iceland’s glaciers), its snow-capped peak taking on the rosy hues of the sunset.

The glacier descended into more mountains, and as we approached the range, I noticed a thin white column down the face of it.”Guys, is that a waterfall?” I asked. It was. “Ooh, do you think we could drive closer to it?” We could. And we did.

It turned out to be Seljalandsfoss, another of Iceland’s very famous waterfalls. Though I’d heard of it before, I had no idea that we would be passing by it. It was a happy accident that we ended up driving by it just at the perfect time of day.

 

A few extra minutes spent anywhere else during the day and it would have been too dark to see it; a few less, and we wouldn’t have gotten to enjoy it right at the most colorful, vibrant hour of sunset. That was even more special because Seljalandsfoss has a path leading directly behind the falls — meaning that we were able to watch the sunset through a waterfall.

We finally reached Vík well after dark, intending to check into a hostel there. We hadn’t made a reservation because we figured that on a Wednesday night, at the end of Iceland’s tourist season, it couldn’t possibly be a problem to find accommodation in a tiny speck of a town bursting with hostels and hotels. Indeed, Vík was dark and eerily silent, seemingly devoid of life. We came across one hostel with a very odd vibe. No one was at the front desk, and it felt abandoned and creepy. We drove around some more and finally found another that was warm, welcoming, and full of friendly people — no, but actually full of these friendly people. It was completely booked up. Beginning to feel a little nervous, we started making some phone calls to every other hostel and guesthouse in the area, just to be told again and again that they were fully booked.

It was beginning to look like our sad car would be our sad bed for the night. We decided to get dinner awhile, because our empty bellies were making the situation seem extra desperate. After a delicious meal and some good Icelandic beers, we felt better, and even managed to find a place with beds available. It was a 30 kilometer drive away, but we decided to go for it. As we drove, I gazed out the window at the night sky — and the aurora appeared again, as if on cue to remind me that everything would be just fine.

Sure enough, we ended up spending a very comfortable night at a countryside hotel that ended up being even cheaper than any hostel we would have booked in Vík. I drifted off to sleep feeling satisfied and excited for what the coming days would hold.