Barefoot Travel's Sarah Boville thought she knew what Iceland would look like — then Colette took her somewhere she never could have found on her own.
At a Glance
Iceland's dramatic landscape—glaciers, geysers, waterfalls—defies expectation until experienced in person. An escorted tour with a local guide reveals the mythology and stories embedded in the terrain, while shared experiences like viewing the Northern Lights with fellow travellers create deeper connections than solo travel typically allows.
There is a version of Iceland that exists on social media feeds and travel brochures. Waterfalls tumbling into mist. Geysers erupting on cue. The Golden Circle, ticked off in a hire car. Then there is the Iceland that Sarah Boville experienced on Colette's Midnight Sun, Glaciers, Geysers and the Golden Circle tour. That version is harder to find, and, as Boville will tell anyone who asks, almost impossible to access on your own.
Boville, owner of Barefoot Travel, is the kind of travel advisor who believes in doing her homework the old-fashioned way: by showing up in person. She had heard Iceland described in superlatives so many times that she arrived with a set of expectations already firmly in place. They did not survive the first day. "The landscape was quite shocking for me," she says. "It wasn't what I had anticipated or thought I was going to see." Coming from a professional whose job is to paint destinations in words for her clients, that admission carries real weight. Iceland, it turns out, defies description until you are standing inside it.
A Landscape That Does Not Look Real
The physical scale of Iceland is the first thing to recalibrate. Boville describes glaciers and rugged capes and waterfalls that pour over cliff edges with a force that seems almost theatrical, scenery so dramatic it reads as invented. But what she returned to again and again in conversation was not any single landmark. It was the relentless sense of anticipation, the feeling that around every corner there was something completely different waiting. Iceland did not let her settle into a rhythm. It kept surprising her, and that, she says, is precisely the point.
The Colette itinerary was built to honour that quality. Rather than threading together the obvious stops into a highlights reel, the tour surfaced experiences and locations that exist below the level of the standard tourist map. Boville was candid about what that meant in practice. "That's one of the things I love about escorted travel," she explains. "Someone has already done the work of finding those special places, arranging the logistics and creating an itinerary that allows you to experience so much more than simply checking off the major tourist attractions." For an advisor who has sent countless clients abroad, experiencing that curation from the inside shifted something in her professional understanding of what a great tour actually delivers.
The Stories Beneath the Surface
Iceland is a country layered with mythology. Its landscapes are not simply geological formations but characters in a centuries-old tradition of fable and folklore, and the distinction matters only if someone is there to draw it out. Boville found that guide in Colette's local expert, whose knowledge of the land went far beyond logistics. "You would never know the stories and the fables of all the different destinations if you didn't have an experienced local tour guide to share all of that with you," she says. "And Iceland is full of fables and tales." Without that voice in her ear, the lava fields would have remained lava fields. With it, they became something storied and alive.
This is a distinction Boville now considers essential when advising clients who are weighing an independent itinerary against an escorted experience. A local guide who lives in the destination, she argues, carries a depth of context that no amount of pre-trip research can fully replicate. The guide is not reading from the same sources the traveller has already consulted. The guide is the source.
The Moment That Changed Everything
If the landscape was the surprise, the Northern Lights were the revelation. Boville had known, in the abstract, that Iceland offered the possibility of seeing the aurora borealis. She had not anticipated what the experience would feel like when it arrived. The lights appeared, dancing across the Icelandic sky in the way that every photograph promises but somehow still fails to prepare you for. But what made the moment unforgettable was not the spectacle itself. It was who she was standing with. "Seeing the Northern Lights with other people on the tour that we'd been spending the week and creating relationships with was completely amazing." A week of shared buses, shared meals and shared wonder had quietly built something. When the sky ignited, those people were no longer strangers. They were witnesses together.
That layering of natural phenomenon and human connection is, Boville believes, the thing most independent travellers miss. You can see the Northern Lights alone. You cannot manufacture the feeling of seeing them with a group of people who have, over seven days, become part of your story.
Who This Trip Is For
Boville is thoughtful when the conversation turns to fit. Iceland's terrain is physically demanding in places, and she is careful to flag that mobility can be a consideration depending on the hikes involved. That said, she is equally clear that the destination is not closed to travellers with accessibility needs. There are Colette tour options designed to accommodate a range of requirements, and she encourages anyone with specific considerations to have that conversation before ruling Iceland out entirely.
Her strongest endorsement is reserved for multi-generational families. The destination, she says, offers something for every age. The spectacle is universal. The stories resonate across generations. The shared experience of standing at the edge of a glacier or watching a geyser erupt creates the kind of travel memory that families carry forward together.
Her professional advice on sequencing is equally clear. Iceland, she suggests, is best encountered first through a structured escorted tour, one that opens doors the independent traveller would never find. Then, once a traveller understands the landscape and has a sense of what draws them most, a return visit on their own terms becomes genuinely meaningful rather than merely ambitious. "Start escorted," she says in effect. "Then go deeper." It is the kind of counsel that only makes sense coming from someone who has done exactly that.
An Advisor Who Has Been There
Boville's approach to her practice rests on a simple principle: she only recommends what she has personally lived. It is why she took the Colette Iceland tour before adding it to her advisory portfolio, and it is why her next trip, a Holland America cruise departing Miami in late November and calling at Key West, Cozumel, Ocho Rios and St. Thomas, is as much a professional exercise as a personal one. She books Holland America for clients regularly. Now she is going to experience it herself.
When a client asks Boville what an Iceland escorted tour is really like, she does not reach for a brochure. "I've been there," she says simply. "Let me tell you about it." For travellers who are weighing up a bucket-list destination and wondering whether an escorted tour is the right way in, Boville is already looking ahead to the conversations she will have when they reach out. Iceland changed the way she thinks about guided travel. She is ready to share exactly why.
