Whale watching

Today we drove from Husavik to a place near Hofsos. 

We started the day early in the morning with a large breakfast and a short drive into Husavik where we caught our tour out to sea for whale watching.  We wore our warmest outfit and that wasn't nearly enough to keep warm.  Luckily they had overalls for everyone to have for the journey into the Arctic wind.  Still, it was a very sunny and relatively warm day. Oir fir stop was puffin island, where 200,000 puffins roost this time of year. They looked like locusts swarmings while we approached the island. It was pretty cool to see so many all over.  The next stop was after a westward sail to see our first whale. The first thing we noticed was that it was gigantic. They called it a hybrid because they couldn't identify whether it was a blue whale or a fin whale, but it was definitely impressive.  We moved on and came across a humpback whale in a feeding pattern which brought him to the surface pretty frequently.  We saw the fluke several times. There was one more whale which appeared at the side of the boat as we motored back go to the dock.

The rest of our day was mostly driving. We did make a stop in Aukuari to see the botanical gardens and to have some coffee and tea with a contact we had through Liz's school. The drive to our hotel tonight was magnificent yet pretty treacherous. They don't believe in shoulders for the roads or guard rails to protect from hurling the car off of all the cliffs here so most people end up driving right down the middle of the road.  Luckily most of the two directional roads do actually have two lanes. There are occasions when they actually only have one lane.  One notable tunnel is about 3 km long and only has 1 lane for all traffic. In it we had to stop at special turnouts to let oncoming traffic go by before pressing forward. 

The guesthouse tonight unfortunately pales in comparison to last night's accommodations. Guess I'll try to get some sleep.