Glacier Treks & Ice Caves Near Reykjavík

Our South Coast tour included fascinating sights that would have been greatly enhanced if the microphone worked!!! Lucky has bountiful knowledge of Iceland because of her extensive education. The microphone system was so staticky that people gave up listening to her and conversed amongst themselves. What a shame! I would love to give Lucky 5 stars but can only give Arctic Tours a 2 because of the extremely poor sound.

For the most part - our tour was pretty good. We did a four-day tour which was a three-day and then 1 day extension where we left our group and joined a day trip to the glacier. It was a lot of bussing - loooong days on the bus with short stops. We were able to see a lot but, boy, lots of driving in a small but with 18 people was not the most pleasant. There were a group of six people in our group of 18 who came from a cruise ship and three of the six were clearly very ill. One woman had a wracking cough that was deep from her lungs and wore a mask the whole time (thank goodness) but sat on the bus beside my husband and was hacking and coughing non-stop. We spoke early on to our guide and asked that they either try to separate them, speak to them because we didn't want to get sick and have a two-year old at home to return to. Our guide acted like my husband was crazy - but did speak to them and then told my husband "it's just a cold". Well, she was so sick that she stayed in her room the whole next day and then didn't do any of the tour stuff on the glacier the following day and stayed in the van. Her husband was also hacking into the back of my head and I had to ask him to put on a mask. Another individual traveling with them was sounded worse by day 3 and coughed into the bus (and back of my head) for the entire third day on the van - I had to again turn around and ask him to put on a mask. Thank goodness I had old N95 masks from another trip in my book bag so my husband and I wore them the entire time we rode the bus, which was all day for three days and not very pleasant. They were not asked to sit near the back of the bus away from everyone else or even to mask and we felt extremely unhappy about this and didn't feel it was handled well at all and added stress to the trip. While Arctic can't help if someone has a cold or is ill, we felt they should at least try to do something when clearly people have a deep wet cough from deep in their lungs and should either try to get another van for them, or ask them to sit away from everyone else and mask. None of that happened at all. We also got a flat tire on day 3 - when we pulled over to fix it there was a spare but no jack, so another van came from nearby (no jack in their truck), so a third came. After about 45 minutes we were on our way. The guide worked hard to change it while we all stood around outside the bus watching (nothing else to do on side of road). The hotel owned by Arctic Adventures that we stayed at was in the middle of nowhere so no other food options and the included breakfast was one of the worst I've ever had and dinner was not that much better with few options on the menu and we felt trapped. Forced to all sit in one huge group at a long table, but it wasn't included and we had to pay - I spent around another $275 USD on two meals that were not that great. At breakfast - they ran out of milk, cereal, and juice and had no fresh fruit. It was extremely bad. I would not recommend this company to any of my friends coming here on a tour. It got the job done for us, but we don't plan to book any "small" (18 didn't feel small) group tours in the future. We will spend money to do it privately based upon this experience with both food and the sick passengers that were not addressed. Lesson learned.

Slavi was an amazing guide. Funny, informative and patient with our group

Had an amazing day with our tour guide Slavi. He was very knowledgeable about iceland and made the tour a lot of fun.

Yesterday we finished our 6-day Ring Road Tour Around Iceland with Artic Adventures. What a wonderful experience it was! The scenery was amazing, the weather was mostly fine, the stops were beautiful and the accommodations very nice. The glacier hike was simply sensational! However, a very important highlight of our trip was our guide, Óskar. He was amazing. Funny, knowledgeable and "stern." We learned a lot from him about Icelandic history, culture, customs, language and humor. I think that our tour group wouldn't have coalesced as well as it did without him. Thanks Óskar, you will always be part of our memories of our Icelandic adventure.