Northern Lights Small-Group Tour From Reykjavik with Hot Drink

Booked to see the Northern Lights, a small mini bus picked us up from a bus stop outside the hotel. The driver was called Gisli and was very friendly and informative. Due to it being towards the end of the season I knew my chances of seeing the lights were slim, Gisli decided not to follow where all the other tours were going and took us further out to the West of Iceland to try and give us the best chance of seeing them. Unfortunately we were not lucky which was a shame. On the way back, Gisli stopped at a service station to allow us to use the toilets and get some food as it was a long drive back. The mini bus was nice and it was good it was a smaller group, we got a small chocolate biscuit and offered hot chocolate from a flask, however I didn’t have any to drink. Gisli overall was a good host, however he answered his phone a couple of times whilst driving which made me feel a bit unsafe, and we were made to get off at a different stop and not the one I was picked up from at the end of the night due to it being ‘nearby’. It was a 5 minute walk compared to the original stop being directly outside the hotel, this may not seem a problem for most people, however it was 130/2am, I was very tired and I travelled on my own, which worried me walking through the streets at that time.

Due to difficult weather conditions and heavy cloud cover for the entire 6 days we were staying in Iceland we had almost given up hope on the possibility of us seeing the Northern Lights. The original tour company we planned to do this tour with kept rescheduling with us every night due to heavy cloud cover and finally he decided to completely refund me because the weather was just not cooperating for the foreseeable future. After he refunded us he offered this tour company, BusTravel Iceland, to try out if we still wanted to try our luck on our last night since there was a possibility of having a break in the clouds. Well we took a gamble and we lucked out, our driver Gisli drove us to the area south by the coast where the break in the clouds would be and literally had us in the perfect spot because once the clouds broke open overhead as predicted we saw the Northern Lights. The lights we saw were not very strong and we could not see the green colors too well with our bare eyes but they were there and our cameras detailed the color of the lights better through the images we captured. We were very thankful we saw them at all because the chances looked very bad for us this whole trip and we thank our driver Gisli for having us in the perfect spot for viewing once the clouds broke up. When it comes to anything Mother Nature related there are no guarantees and we expected to see nothing at all….. but thankfully we were in the right spot and gifted with some lights this night. Note to fellow travelers *** to anyone doing any kind of Northern Lights tour be sure to bring a tripod mount or something of the like so you can hold your camera or phone completely still while capturing footage of the lights, the more still the device is at night the better the pictures will come out. - Nolan

We were pick up on time and our guide (Roman) was knowledgeable and knew that our chances were high that night and directed us where to look. He kept us well entertain until we got to the location. It was a lovely trip and we were offered hot chocolate and cookies at the end of it. The only improvement would be if they could offer adult only trips. The children in the tour got tired, were loud and not interested in the magical phenomenon.