Iceland Day 11

After a nice breakfast at the hotel we sent off to explore Akureyi. 

The city is located at the end of the fjord Eyjafkorour and is surrounded by mountains. Akureyi has a population of about 18,000. It is an important port and fishing centre and enjoys an ice free harbor. A cruise ship had arrived during the night so the town was filled with sightseers. 

Transportation was by foot, and the terrain was quite hilly. I wasn't fond of walking on rocks and uneven ground in previous days, but pavement and concrete isn't the best either. A nearby attraction was the Akureyi Botanical Gardens. 

It is a free public park and is nicely laid out with lots of interesting nooks and crannies. Some of the plants were greenhouse grown but most of them are indigenous to the area. It was surprising to recognize so many of the same plants as we have at home.

Nearby was “old town”, an area with homes of some of the first settlers in the area. The design of the buildings was traditional Icelandic. I especially enjoyed the windows which frequently have beautiful lace curtains. Some of the homes were quite colorful and the wooden trim was beautiful.

The road led me to the main shopping area downtown where I browsed for awhile. I also stopped in at an art gallery which had a most interesting display of life sized wooden characters made from lumber scraps and found things. I especially enjoyed “Mr. Abacus Hat”.

The agenda for the rest of the day was the drive back to Reykjavik which was a 5 and a half hour one. The scenery in Iceland is really quite amazing – rugged, sparsely populated and truly beautiful.

We had a late supper in the restaurant attached to our hotel. I ordered the Arctic char again and it was prepared in a much different way this time – minced on top of miniature sliced potatoes on top of bread, garnished with green apple pieces. Yum!

Iceland Day 10

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!