Finally my Iceland trip has ended. Just to share some experience to those who plan to go there:
My travel period: 8-21 March 2020 (winter season), which is the peak of E.U. Covid outbreak:
1. If you plan to travel in winter, remember to do your research on sunset/sunrise timing. Iceland is huge and all attractions require hours of driving. I would say early March is pretty ideal... you get over 12 hours of sunlight and yet it doesn’t sacrifice aurora hunting.
2. Get a reliable and reputable rental vehicle, and you must get a 4x4 if you plan to drive in winter. We rented a a Toyota RAV4 (AWD) and we got stuck in snow twice. Once we have to walk 1km to nearby farmer and they pulled us out with their track for; another time we manage to wriggle ourselves out from the snow.
3. Get the best insurance coverage on your rental vehicle. We rented from Bluecarrental and took up their max coverage (zero excess). First night our car got hit and run at the parking lot (damaged the rear bumper), and we made a crack on the front bumper. It would have cost us ~1,000 euros worth of repairs if we didn’t take up full coverage. Get zero excess and travel with peace of mind.
4. We check safetravel.is for warnings and check road conditions twice a day. It is very important to know your weather if not you may land yourself in big trouble. Another app we check everyday is the Aurora forecast app. Check for KP and cloud coverage, if it’s cloudy no point to camp for aurora.
5. Use Waze as your default navigation app, it shows speed cameras.
6. Cost of living in Iceland is quite similar to Singapore. Petrol cost almost the same and groceries are on the high side. We didn’t eat out for the whole 2 weeks of our trip... always purchase raw food from Bonus/Netto whenever we can. SGD50 worth of groceries can last 3 us 3 days (that’s breakfast lunch dinner). Bonus is like our Giant, Netto is like Cold Storage. Personally we much prefer Netto as they have more variety.