Well I learned
something about myself in Husavik this morning. I could never ever make a
living as a sailor in the Atlantic!
Husavik is a
beautiful northern coastal town on
the shore of Skjálfandi Bay and is known as the whale capital of Iceland. We
arrived just in time for a three hour tour (everybody sing, "a 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour!"). Our boat was a beautiful old wooden
schooner with about 30 passengers.
On board we
were issued heavy duty waterproof coveralls that also served as life jackets.
To put them on, we had to take off our shoes to get our feet through the
legs. That's where I made my first mistake - not doing my
"waterproof" hiking boot laces back up tightly. What I didn't
count on was the boat taking on so much water and soaking my right boot and
sock completely. Wool gets pretty heavy when its wet. And just like rafting and
snorkelling, that water is unpleasantly cold, to put it mildly.
My second
mistake was in my choice of seats. I thought that the middle would be a smart
choice. I could easily get to where the 'whale action' was or so I thought and
it wouldn't be as rough as the bow. As I sat on the end of a bench, the boat
began to pitch with such violence that I fell right off and onto the floor. If
the floor hasn't been so wet I would have stayed there!
The third thing
I did wrong was to leave my Gravol and my motion sickness bracelets tucked away
in my suitcase back on shore. I'm not a complete landlubber. I’ve been whale
watching on the ocean before in Canada and toured the Galapagos in a small
yacht, so I thought I knew what I was in for....NOT! I was good for the first
hour or so but then I began to feel quite queasy. Keep your eyes on the land
they said, and I tried. They passed around cinnamon buns at the end of the
excursion but the thought of food made me ill. I sure wasn’t the only who had a
hard time on that trip.
On the plus
side, I saw whales…lots of them! They were humpback whales and they were really
swimming, jumping and breaching. My plans were to get some good photos but it
was all I could do to stay upright as the boat was heaving up and down. I
decided my safety was more important than the ‘National Geographic’ shot I had
hoped for. My SLR would have got soaked if I had used it, so that was another
reason to keep it tucked inside my jacket and get a few 'grab' shots with my point and shoot.
When we
returned to shore, it was lunch time. I managed to keep a bowl of Icelandic meat
soup down, that, and a big glass of
ginger-ale. The town of Husavik is very picturesque. The harbor is beautiful,
there is a lovely old wooden church on the main street, and the mountain behind
the town is almost covered with lupins.
We headed
towards our next stop for the night, the city of Akureyi. A welcome stop along
the way was Godafoss. The sun came out and the falls were spectacular. The
height is only 12 meters but the width is 30 meters. The water splits in the
middle and goes down 2 sides.
After
Reykjavik, Akureyi is Iceland’s second largest urban area. Our hotel is lovely,
and is only a few blocks away from the downtown area where we had supper and
browsed in the store windows. Like in Reykjavik, a huge church towers over the
town and is a beautiful landmark for miles around.
I hope I don’t
dream of the ocean tonight!
