ATV and buggy tours — an hour near Reykjavík or the Westfjords at Drangsnes
Quad tours near Reykjavík come as half of a combo day. In Drangsnes you get an empty fjord and a mountain track for €128. Your route decides which one.
ATV tours are the same idea everywhere: helmet, briefing, follow the guide up a gravel track. What changes is what’s at the top. Near Reykjavík you get lava fields and a view back over the city. In Drangsnes in the Westfjords you get an empty fjord, a mountain track and nobody else.
Near Reykjavík
The tracks closest to town run through lava and moorland east of the city. Because they’re close, operators sell them as half of a combination day. Arctic Adventures’ Caving & ATVs pairs an ATV session with a walk through a lava tube, seven hours from €220. Elding’s Reykjavík Whales & Buggy puts a morning whale watch from the Old Harbour with an afternoon in a side-by-side buggy, eight hours from €372. The buggy has a roll cage and a proper seat, so it suits people who don’t fancy straddling a quad.
The downside: you’re sharing the tracks with other groups, and the scenery is lava and hills rather than sea and cliffs. A combo day means a chunk of it is on a bus between activities.
Drangsnes, Westfjords
Drangsnes is a village of well under a hundred people on the Strandir coast, the eastern side of the Westfjords. Activity tours EHF runs quads from there. The 1 Hour Drangsnes Adventure is from €128 — about ninety minutes with kit and briefing, up a mountain track above the fjord and back. The 3 Hour Djúpavík Adventure is from €277 and heads north along the coast towards the old herring factory at Djúpavík, on the road that ends where the Westfjords stop having roads.
The downside: getting there. Drangsnes is the best part of a day’s drive from Reykjavík and there’s no pickup. This is a stop on a Westfjords self-drive, not a day trip. Weather up there is less forgiving, and groups are small enough to be cancelled when it turns.
What to expect either way
You need a driving licence to drive an ATV. Kids ride as passengers. You’ll get muddy — waterproofs are usually provided, gloves not always. An hour on a quad is plenty for most people. Three hours is for those who already know they like it.
Our honest take
Staying in Reykjavík and want a quad ride? Take the Caving & ATVs combo. The lava cave is worth the day on its own and the ATV half is a bonus. Driving the Westfjords? Skip the city ATV entirely and do the one-hour Drangsnes ride. It’s cheaper, the view is better, and afterwards you can sit in the village’s free hot tubs on the shore and look out across the fjord. The tradeoff is that Drangsnes is only for people already going to Strandir. Nobody should drive there just for a quad.
