Golden Circle Private Tour with Kerid & Faxi Waterfall

GYG

Golden Circle Private Tour with Kerid & Faxi Waterfall

★ 3.8(3 reviews)

• Pickup from your hotel
• Guide works in English
• Duration per the operator: 8 hours

from $1192

See dates, price and what is included at the operator

A private eight hours around the Golden Circle

This is a full-day private tour of the Golden Circle that runs for eight hours and picks you up at your hotel in Reykjavik. You travel with a driver-guide who speaks English, and the booking is yours alone rather than shared with other travellers. The route takes in the usual Golden Circle sights and adds two stops that most group tours skip: Kerið crater and Faxi waterfall. At roughly 1,192 USD for the booking, this is a tour for a small party that wants the day shaped around them, not around a coach timetable. The price puts it among the more expensive options in its category, and what you are paying for is the private car, the guide, and the freedom to move at your own pace between stops.

Photographs from the operator VAREN Iceland. They show the listing, not your day.

What the price covers and what you pay at the gate

The listed price includes food and hotel pickup, which sets this tour apart from most others in the Golden Circle category. Only 21 other tours in the same group of 162 say the same about meals. The guide stays with you for the full eight hours, so the driving and the commentary are both part of the package.

One cost is not covered. Kerið crater charges admission of 700 ISK per person, roughly 5.78 USD at the exchange rate of 121.15 ISK per dollar. If your group numbers ten or more, the crater drops its rate to 650 ISK per person. You pay this at the crater itself on the day. Parking at Kerið is free.

A score with too little behind it

The tour carries a rating of 3.8 out of 5, but that score comes from only three reviews. Three ratings are not enough to tell you much about how this tour actually runs. In a category of 162 Golden Circle tours, that puts it at rank 89 by number of reviews, squarely in the middle of the pack and far behind the group tours that have thousands of ratings behind them. The comparable full-day Golden Circle tours from Reykjavik, for instance, draw on 26,671 and 6,359 reviews respectively. Treat the 3.8 as a single data point rather than a settled verdict. What the catalogue does tell you with more confidence is that the tour is not wheelchair accessible, so if that matters to anyone in your party, this is not the booking for you.

Season and time of day for an eight-hour drive

The tour runs all year, but the eight-hour length means daylight matters. From June through August, Reykjavik sees high temperatures of 13 to 15 degrees and lows of 7 to 9 degrees, and the long daylight hours give you comfortable margins for the full circuit. May and September are workable too, with highs of 10 and 11 degrees respectively. The colder months are a different calculation. From November through February, highs sit at 3 to 5 degrees and lows drop to around minus 2, and daylight is short. An eight-hour tour in December means the later stops happen in twilight or darkness. If you book in winter, an earlier start makes the difference between seeing Kerið and Faxi in light or in gloom. The tour does not state a fixed start time, so you can ask for one that fits the season.

What happens at the stops

Kerið crater is a volcanic crater lake with a path that takes you down to the water's edge. You pay the admission at the entrance, then walk at your own pace. The crater is exposed, and the path can be slippery when wet, so shoes with grip are worth having. Faxi waterfall is a broad, low falls off the main tourist circuit, and you view it from a short walk from the car park. Neither stop has the organised facilities of a visitor centre, so plan for basic conditions. Your driver-guide handles the routing between the three main Golden Circle sights and these two extras, and the private car means you can adjust how long you spend at each place. Hotel pickup is included, so your day starts at your door and ends back there.

Who this tour suits and who should look elsewhere

This tour suits a family or a small group of friends who want the Golden Circle without sharing the experience with a busload of strangers. The included food and the private car make it a comfortable, self-contained day, and the English-speaking driver-guide keeps the logistics simple. It also suits travellers who want the less-visited stops of Kerið and Faxi rather than the standard circuit alone.

It does not suit anyone on a tight budget. At from 1,192 USD, it costs roughly ten times what a shared Golden Circle tour with Kerið crater costs, and that shared option runs about 91 USD for a similar seven to eight and a half hours. It also does not suit travellers who need wheelchair access. If you want a longer day that adds a soak at the Secret Lagoon, the ten-hour tour from Reykjavik at from 132 USD is a far cheaper way to get the Golden Circle plus a hot spring. For most visitors, the private format is the luxury, and the price reflects that.

GYG

Golden Circle Private Tour with Kerid & Faxi Waterfall

Dates, remaining places and the current version of what is included are at the operator. This page reflects the state of the catalogue, not the state of this morning.

from $1192

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