The main attraction. This is what we came to Iceland for and boy did we get lucky. We booked a Super Jeep tour on the 2nd night we were in Iceland. Part of the rationale being that if weren't able to catch it the first time around, they would rebook us for subsequent nights. Lucky for us, it only took one try.

The Super Jeep picked us up at 8pm from our hotel. The sun had already set almost 4 hours before so the necessary darkness to see the lights had set in. Chrissy, our driver, warned us that the previous few nights had not gone well. He said he spent 5 hours driving a group around only to come up empty. The two necessary ingredients to see the northern lights is a cloudless night and a high Kp number.

The Kp number is a system of measuring aurora strength. It goes from 0 to 9 (0 being very weak, 9 being a major geomagnetic storm with strong auroras visible). So when your looking at the aurora forecast page, you want to see high Kp numbers. The higher the better. Anything above (and including) Kp5 is classed as a geomagnetic storm. -Aurora Forecast

I had looked earlier in the day and it was going to be a clear night with a Kp index of around 3. Things started looking up right after we escaped the city lights of Reykjavík. Chrissy started hearing reports on his radio that the northern lights had decided to make an appearance for us. He started pointing at them through the front windshield but we couldn't make it out. It wasn't until we arrived at the location and got out of the jeep were we greeted by nature's light show.

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