insurance

March 19, 2016 By Eric 4 Comments

Reykjavik? Ring Road? Planning your Iceland trip

So you’re going to Iceland, and trying to figure out how to plan your trip. The internet is full of millions of pictures of thousands of things you can see and do. How do you plan your itinerary? What should do you do, and what will you need to skip?

Here are my brief recommendations for how you should structure your trip, based on the number of days you have. Note that the categories overlap:

1-5 days: Stay in Reykjavik, and do day tours
3-8 days: Cover one or two areas, but not the whole country
7+ days: Cover the whole country. Well, more of it at least.

I think that some people will find these surprisingly conservative. Why just stay in Reykjavik for 4 days? Why not try the whole country in 6 days? [Read more…] about Reykjavik? Ring Road? Planning your Iceland trip

February 20, 2016 By Eric 25 Comments

Understanding F roads in Iceland

“Iceland” by Moyan Brenn is licensed under CC BY 2.0

If you are planning to drive in Iceland, you need to understand F roads. F roads are mountain roads; Fjallið means mountain in Icelandic.

For lots more about F roads and driving in Iceland, check out our brand new Safe Driving in Iceland Video Course!

Some F roads are hardly roads at all– you might consider them mountain tracks. Here is a picture of F210, for example:

“Iceland” by Moyan Brenn is licensed under CC BY 2.0 [Read more…] about Understanding F roads in Iceland

January 16, 2016 By Eric 102 Comments

Rental Car Insurance in Iceland

Camuflaje by Andrés Nieto Porras is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Update December 2017: Worldwide Insure, my favorite excess rental car insurance company, no longer offers excess car rental insurance in Iceland. I recommend them for coverage in other countries, but you’ll have to go with Roamright or someone else for Iceland. See all of the details below.

Car rental insurance is baffling, and it seems to be even more baffling in Iceland. CDW. Super CDW. Grand CDW? Premium CDW? Sand and Ash? Gravel?

Note that, while the information below is customized for Iceland, much of the information can apply to other countries as well. Especially the credit card insurance options.

Almost all rental car companies in Iceland include CDW

CDW stands for “Collision Damage Waiver.” So it’s not really insurance at all- it’s a liability waiver. The rental car company agrees to not charge you more than a certain amount of money for any damage to the car when you return it. How much can they still charge you? A lot. I took some of the more promising companies from our post about rental car companies, and compared their CDW limits: