Don't use 66Nord! Many problems.
My friends and I did the Landmannalaugar/Laugavegur Trek with Altai/66Nord in August. It didn’t go well for a number of reasons. There was much more work than we had anticipated, including lugging crates of food and equipment and putting up the large mess-tent (in the wind and rain) multiple times, doing the lion’s share of meal preparation (particularly with our first guide) and all of the challenging clean-up (using cold water in distant sinks), and putting up/taking down our own tents (in the wind and rain). Our first guide seemed uninterested in caring for his large group of guests (11 of us) and actually relied on a guest to do all of the cooking, disappearing when it was time to do the dishes. He was particularly non-responsive to those on special diets (vegetarian, GF) - those folks had to kind of fend for themselves. He was French and preferentially spoke French, which left out the 8 of us who were English-speakers. (We did request translation frequently, and he would briefly comply.) He had not done the Laugavegur Trek before and was not a resident of Iceland (despite what the trip description implies). The final insult was his developing illness during the first few days of our week together – he did not mask, did not tell us he was sick, and did not have a COVID test. By the 3rd morning, four of the guests woke up with symptoms and tested positive for COVID. We gave our guide a test and (of course) he was positive (the apparent source). All were shipped back to Reykjavik to isolate and another guide was sent in his place to do the Laugavegur Trek with those of us who remained (also French, also had not previously done the trek, but a much better guide!) Another one of us woke with COVID symptoms and tested positive one day into the trek (leaving just 6 of the original 11 guests) and, while I managed to complete this challenging trek with developing symptoms, I tested positive immediately after our return to Reykjavik. In total, 6 of 11 guests, who planned and paid for this international trip months in advance, were infected with COVID. 66Nord refuses to take any responsibility for our ruined trip. Based on our experience, we cannot recommend Altai or the parent company 66Nord because 1) their representative carelessly ruined the experience of most of the guests and 2) the company has been unresponsive to our requests for some kind of restitution for this mess, and 3) their guide/guest ratio is seriously low (one guide for 11 guests for a remote, challenging trek).
Reply from 66° Nord - Agence de voyage spécialiste des pays du Nord
Even if we answered you on google, please allow me to reiterate our answer here.
We truly regret the massive disappointment felt by each one of you and we would have liked to prevent this from happening in such a frustrating way.
Your claim lies on the fact that your guide acted irresponsibly regarding COVID risks and infected you.
As a matter of fact, there's no way to prove 100% that your guide did indeed contaminate you.
Unfortunately, the contamination could have happened anywhere from leaving your home, commuting to the airport, flying and landing in Iceland as public transportation, airports and planes are high-risk places when it comes to COVID's spread.
We know now that the mask is a means of protection which isn't 100% efficient.
We can't even dismiss the fact that it could have been one of the travelers that infected the guide as everyone was flying from different countries around the world. Prior to the start of the trip, our guide was living on our Icelandic base with some of our coworkers, as soon as we learned that our guide was positive, we had them test themselves and no one was positive, if our guide, Lionel, had been positive before the start of the trip, we may imagine that some of his coworkers would have been too, it wasn't the case.
As soon as we learned that Lionel was positive, we asked him to mask up and come back to Reykjavik with all the people tested positive to COVID.
We suggest that travelers getting COVID during their trip reach out to their insurance to see if it covers COVID-related issues/fees, or to check if they subscribed a Covid-related travel insurance prior to their departure, that's something that we offer to our customers as an additional service.
To finish, you wrote about the fact you had to help to do some cooking and dish-washing. That's something that we clearly state on our online travel description:
"Everyone's involvement in day-to-day tasks: the guide having to handle all the logistic aspects of your trip, we ask each one of you, in a collaborative spirit, to take part in the meal preparation and washing-up."
We hope that the trip back home was uneventful and that you're all healthy by now.