Whales!

 On Saturday (yesterday, as I write this), we went on a whale-watching tour from the town of Húsavík. The company was "Friends of Moby Dick", which I thought was a bit hokey, but it reflects their anti-whaling stance.  It also turns out that the owner, Arnar Sigurðsson, was the very first person to take people out for the purpose of watching whales, not killing them.

We started the day at the Whale Museum, where we watched a short film supposedly showcasing the sounds of whales and dolphins, but the soundtrack was so filled with ambient music that you couldn't really tell if there were actual animal sounds at all, and the visuals may have been based on film footage, but had been heavily manipulated to the point where I'm not at all sure it wasn't AI.

But there were plenty of actual whale skeletons on view, so that was quite nice to see, as well as a full-size model of a whale's heart.




Narwhal!
Great Blue Whale

Lars for scale....

Whale heart

Unfortunately, the day was overcast and chilly, so we stopped for bowls of fish soup to warm up before the boat ride.  We were supplied with full flotation suits, which, while bulky and windproof, were not warm, so it's good that we were well bundled up already.  It was still plenty cold to be spending 3 hours on the water on the north side of Iceland!

Moby Dick

Húsavík harbor


Our view for much of the trip

Lars all bundled up

RIB boat (Rigid Inflatable Boat)

There were several other boats gathered on the west side of the bay, where the whales were feeding.
That 'steam' is a whale breathing!

Our first whale!




She rolled up and slapped the water with her fin!

Starting to dive....

This is why they're called "humpbacks". 
When they do this, they're about to.....

Flukes up!

There's a house over there, all by itself.




And down she goes, for about 2 minutes.



This one is known as "Agata".  She's been in the bay for a couple of weeks.

Lars is fascinated by the many right-angle cliffs in this part of Iceland.

Back to the harbor.  It's not really sunset, or even evening, just looks like that.

We got a late lunch or early dinner of fish & chips, hit the Nettó grocery store, and set off on our 2-hour drive to the night's accommodations, Grásteinn Guesthouse, on a sheep farm near Þórshöfn. We'll be out on gravel roads the next couple of days and will need to pack our own lunches. We got rye bread, smoked lamb, and something like pepper jack cheese, plus the usual hiking snacks of almonds and chocolate.  We even picked up a can of "Icelandic Mexican Soup" to have a light supper after the drive...it was actually quite tasty!

Grásteinn Guesthouse

Entryway

Breakfast area

Our room for 3 nights

Fancy, but not as functional as one might like


We went out for a short walk after supper.  The bird sounds were totally unlike Colorado, as one might expect.  With the help of the Merlin Bird ID app, we heard snipe, whimbrels, red-throated divers (loons, but didn't sound like loons), redwings, and European golden plovers. There's a small stream maybe a kilometer away, which accounts for the marsh birds.


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