The studded tires on our rented Toyota minivan were spinning, but we were not getting out of that three-foot snowbank along a remote Icelandic road without some help. Fortunately, I spotted a passing 4×4 tour vehicle and flagged down the driver, who shook his head as he rolled down the window.
“What are you guys doing?” he said.
Good question.
As an automotive writer for The New York Times, I’ve driven a $4 million Bugatti at 100 miles per hour along the winding Mulholland Highway in Los Angeles, and a Lamborghini at 160 m.p.h. on a track. But none of that prepared me to do 30 m.p.h. on a narrow, icy highway in northern Iceland.
Four of us — including my wife and two friends — were visiting the Godafoss waterfall, about 90 miles from the Arctic Circle, on Day 5 of our 13-day circumnavigation of the island. It was the third week of October, the temperature was in the 20s and snow already blanketed the roads and fields, the result of a heavy storm the week before.
We were eager to see the 36-foot-high cascade nicknamed the Waterfall of the Gods, which we expected to be a mostly frozen wonderland of ice and mist. To get there quicker, I decided to take an alternative route. I had made it only a few yards down the gravel road when I changed my mind. Rather than backing out, I did a three-point turn, and soon our van was axle-deep in snow.
The tour operator attached his winch to a tow hook on the back of our van and began to pull — and pull — until we wound up stuck in another snowdrift, our tires again spinning uselessly. Annoyed, he switched the winch to the front of our vehicle and hoisted us out once again. Success.
We learned the hard way that knowing how to drive during American winters does not necessarily translate to Iceland, where snow begins to fall as early as September, and roads are windswept, often unpaved and frequently covered in black ice during the cold months.
We were planning to drive around Iceland, a nearly Kentucky-size country with a population of about 376,000, on the roughly 830-mile Ring Road, which circles the island. That would give us time to see a magical landscape of majestic waterfalls and glacier-filled lagoons, and to take a few mountain hikes in solitude. This late in the year, we expected to encounter few tourists, or even Icelanders.
We decided to drive clockwise around the island — the opposite direction most tourists take. Not only would traffic be lighter, we thought, but we also wanted to start our journey…
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