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.

May 23 - Siglufjӧrdur and Hrísey Island

We were both pretty tired so decided to skip this morning’s excursion to the Herring Museum and try to catch up on sleep.  Maybe we’ll stop back on our land travel around the island.  The small town was very picturesque.

Jessica and Tara took the tour which included a stop (and samples) at Frida’s Chocolate shops, the Herring Museum, 

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More photos of the Herring Museum
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and a demonstration of herring processing (and free samples),

There was also a bit of a party on the dock.

And even the sea gulls had a feast with the left over herring.

In the afternoon we arrived in Hrísey Island in the Eyjafjorour Fjord.  This was in place of the planned visit to Grímsey Island, right on the Arctic Circle.  The waves were too high to go to Grímsey.  The ship docked out in the fjord and we tendered into the dock on zodiacs.  The wind was up and several of us got rather wet on the way in.

Hrísey was a quaint little island and is the second-largest island off the coast of Iceland.  Most of it is a nature preserve and bird sanctuary and it is forbidden to kill birds on the island.  There is a very small village of about 120 people. 

The first thing we saw was a small park with a zip line and a large bouncy area.  Several people from the ship immediately decided to try the zip line.  Jessica opted for the bouncy area and spent some time on it with some of the local children.  The children start learning English very early in school and all of the children spoke very good English.

Jessica playing with the local children

There was also a small church. 

We decided to walk along the road for a while to get some views of the mountains and the fjord.

We didn’t stay on the island very long as it was windy and rather cold.

Later afternoon we headed out for our next stop but very slowly as it is actually very close...and the scenery was lovely. 

Along the way we were totally entertained by a very energetic humpback whale.  It spent about a half an hour doing breeches for all of our enjoyment.  

After dinner we went back to the lounge for another talk about the folklore of Iceland interspersed with folk songs by one of the guides who is also an opera singer and who has a really beautiful voice.

More cruising...