May 22 – Isafjӧrdur and Dynhandi Waterfall

We are in the very small harbor town of Isafjӧrdur in the Western Fjords area.  

We boarded buses early and had a rather long drive into the mountains.  The weather today is absolutely phenomenal…blue skies with just a bit of clouds…and not nearly as cool as the weather forecasts predicted.

The drive took us through an 8 kilometer tunnel through the mountains

and over three passes.  The views all along the way were truly breathtaking.

We drove along ……. Fjord where we spotted some humpback whales.

We eventually made it to Dynjandi Waterfall, a beautiful fan shaped waterfall that cascades down into a total of seven falls.

On the way back we stopped at Hrafnseyri, the original birthplace and homestead of Jón Sigurðsson, the father of Iceland’s push for independence.  He had been the librarian of the Danish King and advocated successfully for an independent Iceland.  

View from Hrafnseyri

The small complex included a small church.  The church had a statue of Jesus behind the altar and a Jewish menorah on the altar.  One of the guides said that the Icelanders love the menorah so often use it as part of their Christmas decorations.

The complex also had a museum about the life of Sigurðsson and a series of three of the sod roofed homes that used to be the primary abodes in Iceland.  There are very few forests in Iceland; the country is basically “above the tree line".  So they built the original homes in with sod and rocks. 

This was originally a farm and they had some very colorful farm equipment sitting around the grounds.

There were also some sheep pretty close to the road.

And we saw a number of birds in this area as well as at other stops during the day.

The return was pretty uneventful except that Paul lost his footing getting off the bus and hit the ground rather hard.  In Paul's defense, the back door of the bus had a half step where the toilet door opened, and he missed that step.  One guest, a nurse, checked him out quickly and by then the ship’s doctor was down to take a look at his knee.  There was obviously a contusion on his knee and they brought him some crutches just in case.  However, other than hurting a bit he was really more worried about the state of his camera which had hit the ground pretty hard. 

Mary, Jessica and Tara went to a late afternoon lecture on birds of Iceland.  Paul spent some time in the cabin lying down with his leg propped up but he was fine and walked to dinner without the crutches.

We also took a zodiac ride around the harbor area.

The cruising through the fjords was, as usual, breathtaking.

They seem to run the schedule pretty late and it was at least 11:00 before we were all in bed.