South Coast Iceland Itinerary
Reykjavík to Jökulsárlón in two days — every stop in driving order with its real coordinates, and the live road verdict for each leg.
Give the South Coast two days. Day 1 runs Reykjavík to Vík — Seljalandsfoss, Skógafoss, Sólheimajökull, Dyrhólaey, Reynisfjara — which is 186 km and about two and a half hours of driving. Day 2 carries on east to Jökulsárlón via Fjaðrárgljúfur and Skaftafell. One day gets you to Vík properly; one day to the glacier lagoon and back is 740 km.
Ring Road (R1) openHighlands: 1 of 7 monitored roads closed or impassableVegagerðin, updated just now
The coast, west to east
Everything on this itinerary sits on or just off Route 1 between Reykjavík and Jökulsárlón. Open the map to place your own stops along the same stretch.
Reykjavík → JökulsárlónPlan the stops on the interactive mapWhy two days and not one
The South Coast is a straight line, not a loop, and that is what makes it easy to underestimate. Reykjavík to Vík is 186 km — a comfortable day with seven stops on it. Reykjavík to Jökulsárlón is 370 km, and back again is 740 km, which is roughly nine hours of driving for an hour at the lagoon.
So the honest split is: sleep in Vík. It costs you one night and buys you the entire eastern half of the coast at a pace where you can get out of the car.
This stretch is also the one that closes. Between Hvolsvöllur and Vík the road runs under Eyjafjöll and across open flats where crosswind shuts Route 1 several times a winter. Each day below carries a verdict scoped to that corridor’s own road segments, live from Vegagerðin’s feed — not a national headline, and not a sentence someone wrote in 2023.
The two days, with today’s conditions
Daylight today (3 August 2026), Reykjavík: 17 h 52 m of daylight, sunrise 04:38, sunset 22:30. That is how many hours each day below actually has.
- Day 1Reykjavík to Vík — waterfalls and black sand
Leave Reykjavík early and treat the first two hours as driving rather than sightseeing; there is nothing between the city and Seljalandsfoss worth the stop when the rest of the day is this dense. Then: Seljalandsfoss and the hidden Gljúfrabúi next to it, Skógafoss and Kvernufoss behind the folk museum, Sólheimajökull’s glacier tongue, Dyrhólaey’s arch, and Reynisfjara to finish. Sleep in Vík.
Reynisfjara has sneaker waves that have killed visitors — they arrive without warning and run far further up the sand than the previous twenty did. Stay well up the beach, off the wet sand, and never turn your back on the sea. The warning-light system at the entrance is worth reading before you walk down.
South Coast to Vík: Good to go · 186 km · ~2.5 h one way
Sleep: Vík
- Day 2Vík to Jökulsárlón — canyon, glacier, icebergs
East across the Mýrdalssandur flats: Fjaðrárgljúfur’s canyon, Foss á Síðu falling off the cliff beside the road, then Skaftafell for Svartifoss and the Svínafellsjökull viewpoint. Jökulsárlón and Diamond Beach are the end of the line — icebergs calving off Breiðamerkurjökull and washing back up on black sand.
From Vík the lagoon is about two and a half hours each way. If you are driving back to Reykjavík tonight rather than sleeping east, that is a five-hour return leg on top of the day, and in winter most of it in the dark.
Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon: Good to go · 370 km · ~4.5–5 h one way
Sleep: Höfn, or back to Vík
Each driving day's verdict is live and scoped to that route only, verified 3 August, 14:19 Iceland time. Source: Vegagerðin (road.is). Distances and drive times are Vegagerðin figures, rounded. Daylight is computed from the standard sunrise equations for Reykjavík. Days without a scoped corridor say so rather than showing a status we do not hold.
Every stop, in driving order, with coordinates
Twelve stops, west to east. The coordinates are decimal latitude and longitude from our own dataset — paste a pair straight into a sat-nav or an offline map app rather than searching for the name, which is how people end up at the wrong Svínafellsjökull (there are two, 150 km apart).
| Stop | Day | Coordinates | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seljalandsfoss | Day 1 | 63.6155, -19.9882 | Waterfall |
| Gljúfrabúi | Day 1 | 63.6208, -19.9863 | Waterfall |
| Skógafoss | Day 1 | 63.5321, -19.5113 | Waterfall |
| Kvernufoss | Day 1 | 63.5287, -19.4805 | Waterfall |
| Sólheimajökull | Day 1 | 63.5510, -19.3120 | Glacier tongue |
| Dyrhólaey | Day 1 | 63.4037, -19.1166 | Cape and arch |
| Reynisfjara | Day 1 | 63.4044, -19.0690 | Black beach |
| Fjaðrárgljúfur | Day 2 | 63.7713, -18.1719 | Canyon |
| Foss á Síðu | Day 2 | 63.8561, -17.8694 | Waterfall |
| Svartifoss | Day 2 | 64.0277, -16.9753 | Waterfall |
| Svínafellsjökull | Day 2 | 64.0153, -16.8391 | Glacier tongue |
| Diamond Beach | Day 2 | 64.0534, -16.1531 | Iceberg beach |
Every row is a record in our own data, not a number retyped from another guide. The full listing for this region — South Coast waterfalls — has the rest of them, including the ones that do not fit a two-day plan.
The one-day version
If you only have a day, stop at Vík and do it properly: Seljalandsfoss → Skógafoss → Dyrhólaey → Reynisfjara, back to Reykjavík. That is 372 km round trip and about five hours of driving, which leaves enough of a summer day for four unhurried stops and enough of a December day for two.
Add Gljúfrabúi. It is two hundred metres from Seljalandsfoss, up a stream and inside a cleft in the rock, and most of the coaches walk straight past it. You will get wet.
Skip Sólheimasandur on a one-day trip. The plane wreck is a 4 km walk each way from the road — vehicles are not allowed on the track — so it is two hours you could spend at three other stops.
Do not add the glacier lagoon. This is the single most common one-day mistake on this coast. It turns a good day into a driving day. If the lagoon is the reason you came, the two-day plan above is the one you want, or fold it into a longer trip — our five-day itinerary gives it a day of its own.
Check before you commit. The morning you drive, not the week before — the live verdict on this page, or can I drive the South Coast today.
Frequently
asked questions
How many days do you need for Iceland’s South Coast?
Can you do the South Coast of Iceland in one day from Reykjavík?
What are the main stops on the South Coast of Iceland?
Do you need a 4x4 for the South Coast of Iceland?
Is the South Coast worth it in winter?
Should I do the Golden Circle or the South Coast?
Cars & campers
KEF airport pickup 24/74.8
Transmission
Fuel
Seats
Drive
SleepsTours near Iceland's South Coast
Small groups
Duration
Highlights
Type