Iceland’s South Coast area is one of the quadrants of the picturesque road trip on Ring Road that goes around all of Iceland. This area is often further divided into Southwest and Southeast Iceland. Southwest is where you will find iconic South Iceland waterfalls and Black Sand Beaches, one in particular called Reynisfjara Beach with basalt columns that is among the most famous black sand beaches in the world. Southeast is where you will find glaciers including Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon and the unique Diamond Beach. In this post I am going to cover South Iceland Waterfalls and Black Sand Beach first.

After adjusting to Iceland time after your possibly very early AM flight arrival (and possibly exploring early morning things to do and/or rainy day Reykjavik recommendations), I had suggested traveling the famous Golden Circle first as the initial sampler of Iceland’s natural beauty. Those are day trips, but now starts expanding into 2 days or more because there is so much to see as you head farther away from Reykjavik and you don’t want to lose time having to drive back. Staying as you travel this way also gives you more freedom to savor your stops here and pull over to unplanned unique sights all along the way. Head south to what many Icelanders and repeat visitors argue is the easiest to drive and can be visited over and over because the scenery is so stunning. I would agree with that assessment- on a future trip I will probably skip the Golden Circle now that I’ve seen it, but I would go south again.