So I’ve been procrastinating planning for this Iceland trip. Big surprise, I know.
A couple months ago, right after I booked the tickets, I browsed a few YouTube videos to learn more about the country and get some travel ideas rolling. I came across this video below by Allan Su who explored Iceland via the ring road with a camper van. I knew right away that I wanted to do the same. BTW, he also makes pretty great travel videos to other parts of the world and his Japan series is pretty amazing.
I started looking into camper van rentals (by looking, I just mean googling) and all the options I could find were either sold out or extremely expensive. When I had checked just a few weeks ago, there were lots of options and availability. So at this point I’m starting to freak out, thinking that the trip was not going to be as awesome because I had procrastinated booking the camper van.
I couldn’t find any availability through rental companies like Happy Camper or Camper Van Iceland so I got desperate and started messaging all of the camper van rental companies through third party websites – one of those being Nomad by CoolDrive. After asking like 10 different companies if they had any availability for my dates and not receiving any response, I gave up all hope, called it quits, and went to bed.
But the next morning, when I woke up and checked my emails, I saw this:
A response from ProCamper saying that they had one last unit available and it could be booked at any time. I scrambled to grab my credit card and submit the request for a booking and then patiently waited for a confirmation. 30 painful minutes later… I could breath a huge sigh of relief!
We did it! I’m pretty sure I booked the last available camper van in the entire country that wasn’t outrageously expensive. The total cost ended up being $1415 for a two week rental so that comes to about a hundred dollars a day and honestly that’s pretty cheap compared to the $200-$300/night Airbnb options I was looking at. This camper van kills two birds in one stone being that it’s a rental car + hotel combination. We’ll still have to pay to park at campsites around the ring road but I’ve heard they’re only between $15-$30/night.
So you might be asking what do these rental vans include? Lucky for you, I’m here to tell you all about it.
- Nissan NV200 Compact Cargo Van
- Unlimited Mileage
- Double bed with sleeping capacity for 2 passengers (with linens and bedding equipment)
- Kitchen (stove, fridge, equipment, etc)
- Heater
- Camper chairs and table
- Transfer services from Airport
Unfortunately that’s all the information that was provided by nomad. I’ll cover the camper van rental in detail in a later blog.
So I guess that’s it. I’ve secured a camper van for our Iceland trip. That’s my dose of excitement for the week. Oh if you read the last blog, you’ll remember that I only had tickets from JFK to KEF and still needed to book the domestic leg. I ended up getting round trip flights from RDU to JFK – first segment is through Delta for $68.40 and second segment is through Jet Blue for $66.40. We also decided to spend a couple extra days in NYC so I booked a night at the Hilton JFK for $124.99. This is more than I usually pay for accommodations but it’s NYC so everything is expensive and I didn’t want to deal with having to shuttle around and paying for an Uber to stay at an Airbnb that’s only slightly cheaper.
That brings the total costs so far for this trip to: $1809.59 ($904.80 per person). I want to say it’s pretty expensive but I think we have the most expensive parts of the trip paid for (at least I hope so). The majority of the remaining costs should come from food and gas.
Catch you in the next blog!