AKUREYRI, ICELAND AND AT SEA—Tuesday-Thursday, June 10-12, 2014

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Akureyri, Iceland--Tuesday, June 10^th

We were up really early this morning as we were told there was a possibility of seeing whales as we navigated the fjords into port. Unfortunately, we saw heavy, thick fog, which made it pretty impossible to see anything. When it cleared, we could view the lovely snow topped mountain sides of the fjord and admire the occasional farmstead where there was any flat land to build anything on. I don’t know how long this fjord is but it took quite a long time to get into port.

As soon as we were cleared to get off, we left the ship expecting to board a bus to take us to our boat to start our Whale Watching tour. Instead we found that we were expected to walk 5-6 blocks to the tour boat. We were NOT happy at this, at all, as Valerie was still not fully recovered from her sprained foot and I just can’t walk as fast as I felt I was expected to. I was anxious the whole way thinking they might leave without us.

At least the walk was pretty and it was a clear sunshiny day. We went along the bottom edge of Torfunefsbryggja (try pronouncing this one with—a y, two gg’s, and a j together) harbor that was full of birds and eider ducks (a new species for us—female duck’s feathers are used for pillow stuffing) to the other side nearest town.

Finally arriving at the right spot, we boarded the Ambassador for a roughly 3 hour tour. The boat was custom built for whale watching and had several levels for viewing; however, the ladders between the decks were very steep and hard for the two of us to move about easily. Since we were one of the last on board, all the seats on top were taken, but then I didn’t want to sit in the bright sun and be exposed to the cold wind anyway. This tour did employ professional guides that spotted the whales and told us about the fjord we were traveling in.

We saw several humpback whales and one young one entertained us all by breaching, rolling, and basically playing for quite some time in front of the boat. Valerie and I both saw it breach, which was on our bucket list to see, but it is almost impossible to catch a picture of it doing so, as they are so fast and you are never sure exactly where they are going to surface. Wonder how many pictures it took to get the insurance ad’s whale???

We looked at waterfalls, homesteads, floating bird nests right on top of the water, and a couple of villages. Quite a number of horses were seen grazing grass in pastures on the hillsides. One of the falls was the result of road construction. I am not sure if the falls were there already or they developed new, when a tunnel was being cut into a mountain.

The tour guide pointed out a huge abandoned herring fish factory as we turned around to head back toward town. Two of the five largest Icelandic fishing companies are headquartered here because it has an ice-free port with one of the warmest climates in Iceland even though it is only 62 mi from the Arctic Circle, but again, the decrease in fish has forced many factories such as this one to close. I am not sure what the people who occupy the homes nearby do to live, as in this instance, there does not appear to be anything around for them to do.

There were also some buoys in this fjord that were either run on wave action or some other energy source like solar or some combination of the two. Iceland is almost self-sustaining in energy from their thermal and other renewable resources.

Back in port we asked if someone could drive us back to the ship and we got a ride in a brand new SUV from a luxury car maker that we didn’t think built such a vehicle—$100,000+, at least. He let us out in front of a very nice shop on the pier that I wandered through. We were sorry we didn’t get to visit the town itself, as it is the 2^nd largest in Iceland in population, and it looked very interesting from the little we saw of it. I guess we will have to visit another time as this part of the world is beautiful!—of course it is summer.

At Sea while sailing around the top of Iceland, crossing the Arctic Circle and on toward Northern Ireland--Wednesday and Thursday, the 11^th and 12^th of June.

In anticipation of our arrival in Northern Ireland and later, Southampton, Great Britain, Valerie lectured on the might of the British at sea in “Rule Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!”

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