Road to DC-3 plane wreck in Iceland got closed

Road to DC-3 plane wreck in Iceland got closed

Manuel Becker Manuel Becker in News
16.03.2016 · 1 min read
Photo by Manuel Becker

Probably one of the most well known "tourist attractions" in Iceland is the US DC-3 plane wreck on Sólheimasandur in the south of the country, which was easily accessible with a 4x4 from the Ring Road.

Photographers love this spot for shooting the Northern Lights, because of the pretty neat foreground element. The road though, is closed now because too many tourists didn't care about the marked streets, that were built by the landowners to make this place accessible by car. This spot especially gained attraction for tourists since it was featured in a music video of Justin Bieber last fall. According to mbl.is the owners had no other choice than closing the road to the wreck site for the simple reason that they want to save the nature and make this place staying attractive for the future.
The plane is still reachable by foot with a walk of about 20-30 minutes, which can be pretty exhausting during cold or stormy days.

I met one of those people who don't care as I visited this amazing place in Iceland, when a guy overtook me offside the road because he needed to be 30 seconds faster at the crash site to make some fast selfies, letting his child play and jump on the plane and get back again to the Ring Road for the next "attraction". This feels like such a crazy ignorance to me, because this is neither my property nor I want to damage it for all the other people who want to visit it after me.

I can't say this often enough: Please respect the nature and the properties of the locals, because this is what happens if you do not and everybody has to suffer. Always remember that you wouldn't want to have some tourists that are destroying your dooryard, would you?

If you have also experienced things like this feel free to tell us your story in the comments below!

Comments (4)

Please log in or sign up for free to leave a comment or ask a question.
Bill Boswell
Bill Boswell 01.04.2018
Was there in June 2012 and the only directions were from our GPS. We stopped on the ring road where the GPS said to turn left coming from Vik, moved the fence post, and drove in after replacing the fence. There were no other indications that the plane was there. We were the only ones there for 1.5 hours and had lunch while taking dozens of photos. Unfortunately on return trips to Iceland we found it has become overrun with tourists who, as this article describes, have had a major negative impact on this location. In 2012 we paid $160 CDN for a room at the Iceland Air hotel in Vik, the same place on a return visit in 2017 was $380 for the same time of year.
Manuel Becker Team
Manuel Becker 01.04.2018
Hey Bill, thanks for sharing your experiences. Would definitely be nice if all the visitors would respect the local rules a little bit more. The pricing is sad, but that's just the market and since everybody wants to visit Iceland I can understand it for sure. Hope you still had a great time over there!
Jorge Gomez
Jorge Gomez 16.03.2016
Sad, I was planning to stop there in my trip on May
Manuel Becker Team
Manuel Becker 16.03.2016
You still can because as Sebastien said you are still able to visit the plane... it just got pretty uncomfortable because you have to walk all the way from the Ring Road to the crash site. Hope you have a great stay in Iceland though!!
Imprint & Contact © Locationscout 2024 Privacy / Terms