Private Landmannalaugar Highlands Day Tour by Super Jeep – from Reykjavik

Your guide arrives at your accommodation in the Reykjavik area holding a tablet with your name, helps you load any gear, and you set off east. The drive takes you through the south Iceland lowlands with the bulk of Hekla visible on the horizon - one of Iceland's most active volcanoes, and a marker that you are leaving the coast behind and heading somewhere different.

A brief stop in the small town of Hella for restrooms and any last supplies. Once you leave the lowlands and the gravel tracks begin, there are no services, no facilities, and no turning back easily. This is the last comfortable pause before the interior takes over.

Sigoldugljúfur is a highland canyon that most people travelling to Landmannalaugar drive straight past. A short walk from the Defender takes you to the rim, where a turquoise river runs far below through sheer canyon walls lined with dozens of small waterfalls dropping from the rock in thin, vertical threads. The name - Valley of Tears - comes from exactly that image. It is one of the quieter and more unexpected landscapes in southern Iceland.

Ljótipollur translates roughly as "ugly puddle" - a name that tells you something about Icelandic understatement. The crater lake is anything but a deep blue pool sits at the bottom of a steep volcanic crater ringed by slopes of vivid red and burnt orange scoria. The contrast between the colours is sharp and immediate. This is an explosion crater, formed in a single violent event, and the geometry of it - the near-perfect circle, the sheer drop, the stillness of the water below - is unlike anything on the coast.

Frostastaðavatn is a wide highland lake sitting in the heart of the rhyolite landscape, framed on all sides by coloured peaks. The light on the water changes with the sky, and the surrounding mountains - striped in green, yellow, rust, and black - give the lake a quality that belongs entirely to this part of Iceland. A moment to pause, look, and understand just how far into the interior you have come.

Landmannalaugar barely looks real. The mountains of rhyolite around the valley glow in shades of red, ochre, green, purple, and black - colours produced by the slow cooling of volcanic glass over thousands of years. Steam drifts from vents in the ground. The Laugahraun lava field, solidified from an eruption in the 15th century, rolls out from the valley floor in a frozen black wave. Your guide leads you into the field and through the coloured hills at a pace that suits your group, explaining the geology and pointing out the quieter corners away from the main trail. Then the natural geothermal hot spring. No changing rooms, no pool infrastructure, no spa. Just warm water at the edge of the lava field, open to the highland sky, surrounded by mountains. You also take your packed lunch here. It is the kind of place people come back to.

Your guide drops you back at your accommodation in the Reykjavik area. The total day runs around 11 hours, roughly 7 of them on the road. That distance is exactly why almost nobody reaches Landmannalaugar on a standard tour.