Day 71 Whale Watching and wild camping on Iceland’s north coast beaches

Day 71 Whale Watching and wild camping on Iceland’s north coast beaches

The sun was up from before 03:00 and it was t-shirt warm when we had breakfast outside when we emerged from the van much much later.. After packing up we went back up to the cliffs at the head of the canyon so that Susan could see what we had the night before and then we were off up the coast road to Husavik, the self proclaimed ‘ European capital of whale watching’.

The way followed the coast road where we stopped and watched puffins - the beaches facing north that receive the brunt of the Arctic storms are strewn with driftwood - not a few sticks and an occasional log or two but shed loads of tree size trunks.

The whale museum was ace, lots of factoids plus skeletons of just about every whale, all recovered from the local area having been caught in nets or found beached. We then boarded what was once an old fishing boat with 30 others and chugged across the bay in search of whales...... Susan said afterwards she could go whale watching every day and never get bored and I know what she meant.

Charlie is in there

They offered us these all body padded overalls that all 5 of us grabbed hold of  - it was a still day on shore but out in the bay it was pretty chilly, not unexpected at only 60 Km from the arctic circle. For the first 60 minutes we all stared out to sea but there was little more than puffins and gulls, then Minke whales could be seen at some distance – breaching the surface with a very similar appearance to a massive dolphin. The scenery was stunning as we turned to go to a different area when across the radio a humpback whale had been sighted in another area of the bay. 20 minutes later we joined a couple of boats who were already there. 

Hump back coming up for air

Whale spotting starts with looking for blow hole mist cloud as it surfaces  after a dive, the boat has a ‘whale spotter’ who sits on the top of the boat’s wheelhouse; ours was a young Icelander who invited those who wanted a better view up the ladder to join him.....Kate, Jack and I grabbed the opportunity and what a place to be  - the Hump Back has a typical dive time of 4-7 minutes so we stayed 30 or so minutes to see a number of cycles of it surfacing, flipping its tail and then diving........ We could have stayed and watched for another hour.

The spade gets another outing

In the early evening it took a couple of drives down some rough tracks before finding a top wild camping spot above a grey/black sand beach. We made a fire, had a BBQ and watched the countless ducks as they cruised up and down the beach in convoy....very difficult to beat this spot.

Day 71  Abygryi ( I) to Husavik (I)  220 Km     Total 10247 Km