Iceland in February.
Because apparently my friends and I looked at a country famous for glaciers, violent weather, approximately seven minutes of daylight and an Atlantic Ocean actively trying to kill everything near it and thought: Yeah. This seems like a good time for a road trip.
And to Iceland’s credit, it tried repeatedly to explain why this was a terrible idea.
We just weren’t listening.
We had spent the better part of the trip attempting to drive around the country while Iceland deployed its traditional February hospitality package of snow, ice, wind, more snow, sideways snow and the occasional blizzard that made you reconsider whether whatever was at the end of the road was really worth seeing.
Turns out February in Iceland has weather.
Who fucking knew?
Eventually, after another spectacularly unsuccessful attempt at driving somewhere Mother Nature had apparently closed without consulting Google Maps, we found ourselves heading back along Iceland’s southern coast.
And that’s when we stumbled across a parking lot for the Sólheimasandur plane wreck.
An abandoned DC-3 sitting in the middle of a black sand wasteland?
Well.
Fuck it.
We weren’t doing anything else successfully.
DESTINATION: Iceland DC-3 plane wreck
GPS COORDINATES
63.4591, -19.3647
CLOSEST AIRPORT
CURRENT WEATHER
overcast clouds (46F / 8C)
AIR QUALITY INDEX (AQI)
Good (13)
THE ICELAND DC-3 PLANE WRECK IS EXACTLY WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE
Several kilometers from Iceland’s Ring Road sits the mangled fuselage of an old American military aircraft, slowly being sandblasted into oblivion by Icelandic weather.
This is the famous DC-3 plane wreck in Iceland, although calling it a “DC-3” is technically a little sloppy. The aircraft was a U.S. Navy Douglas C-117D, a military derivative of the DC-3, which is why basically everyone on the internet just calls it the Iceland DC-3.
On November 21, 1973, the aircraft was forced to land on Sólheimasandur after encountering problems during a flight over southern Iceland.
Everyone onboard survived.
The airplane did not.
And instead of hauling the broken aircraft away, much of the fuselage was eventually left sitting on the enormous black sand plain.
Which, several decades later, turned out to be fantastic for tourism.
Humanity really does have an incredible ability to monetize absolutely anything.
Plane crashes.
Volcanoes.
Nuclear disasters.
Abandoned buildings.
I’ve wandered through enough dark tourism destinations to know that if humanity leaves something sufficiently creepy somewhere long enough, eventually photographers will arrive with tripods.
I am absolutely part of the problem.
FEBRUARY HAD ALREADY KICKED OUR ASS
By the time we reached Sólheimasandur, our Iceland road trip had become considerably less “epic winter adventure” and considerably more “let’s see which roads are still physically attached to the Earth.”
This wasn’t my first encounter with Iceland behaving like Iceland.
I’ve stood inside clouds of geothermal steam at Gunnuhver Hot Springs, wandered around Reykjavik under the country’s standard issue gray skies, and spent an embarrassing amount of my life chasing the Northern Lights around Iceland with wildly inconsistent results.
But February driving introduced another dimension to the relationship.
Wind.
Not “oh, it’s a little breezy today” wind.
The weather around Sólheimasandur was throwing roughly 70 km/h winds across a giant, completely exposed black sand plain.
There are no trees.
No buildings.
No shelter.
Nothing.
Just you, the North Atlantic weather machine and several kilometers of open terrain between the parking lot and a broken airplane.
Which brings us to an important question.
YOU CAN WALK TO THE PLANE WRECK
The Sólheimasandur plane wreck hike is roughly 4 kilometers each way across the black sand.
Under decent conditions, that’s completely manageable.
It’s flat.
The route is straightforward.
And walking across this enormous barren landscape probably makes seeing the wreck slowly appear in the distance considerably more dramatic.
How wonderful.
We took the fucking bus.
Because sitting beside the parking lot was one of the most hilariously Icelandic solutions imaginable.
A gigantic monster-truck-looking shuttle bus with enormous tires that appeared capable of driving across Sólheimasandur, through a glacier, over a moderately sized building and possibly directly into Reykjavík if necessary.
I looked at the bus.
I looked at the endless black sand.
I looked at the wind attempting to relocate us to Norway.
This was not a difficult decision.
THE MONSTER BUS WAS RIDICULOUS
There’s something inherently funny about taking an enormous off-road vehicle several kilometers across a completely flat beach.
It felt spectacularly excessive.
It was also spectacularly useful.
While people choosing the Sólheimasandur plane wreck walk got the full Icelandic experience of trudging across an exposed volcanic plain while being punched repeatedly by atmospheric pressure, we climbed inside our giant wheeled cocoon and watched the misery through the windows.
Call it lazy.
Call it cheating.
Call it whatever you want.
I call it having functioning survival instincts.
And based on the number of people searching for the bus to the plane wreck in Iceland, apparently I’m not the only person who has stood in that parking lot and suddenly reconsidered their commitment to cardio.
The monster shuttle bounced across the black sand toward the wreck while we remained relatively warm, relatively dry and extremely pleased with our life choices.
For once.
THEN THE PLANE APPEARS
The landscape around Sólheimasandur is weirdly empty.
That’s what makes the wreck work.
There aren’t dramatic mountains immediately behind it.
There aren’t souvenir stands.
There aren’t restaurants selling $37 bowls of Icelandic soup.
There’s basically nothing.
Then suddenly there’s an airplane.
Or what’s left of one.
The silver fuselage sits alone against miles of black volcanic sand, battered and hollowed out after decades of Iceland doing what Iceland does best:
slowly beating the shit out of everything.
The wings are gone.
The tail is mostly gone.
The interior has been stripped away.
What’s left looks less like an airplane and more like a movie prop abandoned after someone yelled CUT and forgot to clean up.
Except it’s real.
And that’s what makes the abandoned plane in Iceland so photogenic.
AND WE HAD THE FUCKING THING TO OURSELVES
This was the payoff for visiting Iceland during arguably the most miserable possible time of year.
There was basically nobody there.
No influencer queue.
No photographers waiting for someone to get out of their shot.
No tour groups orbiting the fuselage.
Just us, an abandoned airplane and enough wind to achieve human flight without purchasing a ticket.
So we did what any responsible travelers would do after being delivered to an airplane wreck in the middle of nowhere.
We absolutely murdered our camera memory cards (while we could still feel our fingers).
Wide shots.
Close-ups.
Inside the fuselage.
Outside the fuselage.
Plane against black sand.
Plane against angry sky.
Plane from slightly over here.
Plane from slightly over there.
The photography equivalent of:
“OH SHIT THIS LOOKS COOL.”
Click.
Click.
Click.
Click.
We had the place practically to ourselves and knew the weather could deteriorate at any moment, so this became less of a thoughtful photography session and more of a NASCAR pit stop with cameras.
Get out.
Spread out.
Photograph everything.
Try not to blow away.
Regroup.
OKAY. WE’RE DONE. WHERE’S THE BUS?
After approximately one metric shitload of photographs, the novelty of standing beside a wrecked airplane in 70 km/h winds began wearing off.
Quickly.
Because here’s the thing about the Iceland plane wreck: Once you’ve seen the airplane, you’ve seen the airplane.
It’s incredibly photogenic.
The setting is surreal.
The black sand makes the wreck look fantastic.
And if you’re into abandoned places, aviation or photographing things humanity has left behind, it’s absolutely worth seeing.
But there isn’t exactly a gift shop inside.
There’s no interpretive museum.
Nobody is giving guided cockpit tours.
It’s a broken airplane sitting on a beach.
Eventually our entire group reached roughly the same conclusion.
Cool.
Very cool.
Where the fuck is the monster truck?
So we stood there.
In the wind.
Beside our freshly photographed airplane.
Waiting for our enormous Icelandic school bus on steroids to return and rescue us from our own tourism decisions.
SHOULD YOU WALK OR TAKE THE SÓLHEIMASANDUR PLANE WRECK SHUTTLE?
Under normal weather conditions?
I’d probably walk.
The hike across Sólheimasandur is part of the experience, and slowly approaching the wreck across that enormous black landscape would make the arrival feel considerably more dramatic.
But Iceland weather gets a vote.
And Iceland occasionally votes FUCK YOU.
If it’s cold, raining, snowing or throwing ridiculous winds across the beach, the Iceland plane wreck shuttle suddenly becomes one of humanity’s greatest technological achievements.
The important thing is not treating this like a casual little stroll because Google says the terrain is flat.
The terrain isn’t the problem.
Iceland is the problem.
There is essentially no protection from the weather between the parking area and the wreck. If conditions turn ugly, you’re standing several kilometers from shelter on an exposed black sand plain.
February taught us that lesson repeatedly.
IS THE SÓLHEIMASANDUR PLANE WRECK ACTUALLY WORTH IT?
Yes.
With conditions attached.
I wouldn’t plan an entire Iceland trip around the DC-3 plane wreck. Iceland has far too many spectacular landscapes, volcanoes, geothermal areas and other opportunities for Mother Nature to casually remind you who’s in charge.
But if you’re already driving Iceland’s south coast?
Absolutely stop.
The wreck is genuinely strange.
It’s incredibly photogenic.
And the emptiness surrounding it gives the entire place a post-apocalyptic feeling that photographs don’t completely capture.
It’s also perfectly aligned with the kind of abandoned weirdness I repeatedly seek out around the world, whether that’s the enormous Soviet Duga radar array inside the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, the decaying Buckner Building in Alaska, or rows of retired airplanes baking in the Arizona desert at Pinal Airpark.
Apparently if humanity abandons something large enough, I eventually show up with a camera.
The Iceland plane wreck just happens to come with black sand, hurricane-adjacent winds and a monster truck.
ICELAND: 1. OUR ROAD TRIP: 0.
Our February Iceland road trip didn’t exactly go according to plan.
Blizzards happened.
Roads became questionable.
Destinations became unreachable.
Plans were abandoned.
And Iceland repeatedly reminded us that our itinerary was merely a suggestion submitted for Mother Nature’s approval.
But that’s also how we ended up standing beside the Sólheimasandur plane wreck.
We hadn’t meticulously planned it.
We weren’t chasing some carefully optimized Instagram itinerary.
We were driving back from another weather-induced failure, saw an abandoned airplane sitting several kilometers away on a black sand beach and collectively decided:
Well, fuck it. There’s nothing else better to do.
So we climbed aboard an absurd monster bus.
Got blasted across Sólheimasandur.
Jumped out.
Took a shitload of pictures.
Got blasted by 70 km/h winds.
And then stood beside a crashed airplane waiting impatiently for our ridiculous monster truck to come rescue us.
Sometimes the best travel stories come from carefully planned adventures.
And sometimes everything goes completely to shit and you accidentally find an airplane.
I strongly prefer the second kind.
