Trying to catch one of the items we missed the day before we drove out to see a turf church. It had a cute cat. It was not open, so I don’t have a ton more details. The cat was cute.
After that it was on to whale watching! It was cold out, so we all had layers going on when we reached the ship. Then they offered us insulated coveralls and a thick raincoat. So, I had a thermal shirt, a sweater, a down jacket, a rain coat, pants, rain pants, a thick padded coverall, and a heavy raincoat. Kind of felt like the little brother in A Christmas Story. Anna-Sophia looked like Kenny from South Park. I assume they did this so they could just toss annoying tourist overboard with no chance of them swimming back.
Out on the water we kept ourselves occupied by watching for whales on the completely flat still ocean. And by reminding each other of the South African shark diving trip where we learned the hard way to check the units, as 1-3 foot swells are very different than 1-3 meter swells. That trip I was the only person on the boat who did not loose their lunch. This trip was smooth as silk. Though very boring on the way out. Nothing. One fin of a harbor porpoise. That was it. Then we reached the outer limit of how far they would go. There a humpback decided to show off for us. We kept running from side to side to watch it surface and then dive back down. The guide would tell us the whale would not be back for like 5 minutes. The whale kept proving her wrong coming back much quicker.
The whale played this game for over a half hour. And then we had to head back. Of course on the way we also ran into a pod of dolphins with babies. All of which were amazingly cute. But, very quick and unpredictable. So, I have no photos of them. Though we did see some big jellyfish. Have photos of the jellyfish, they move slower.
Other than shedding about 20 lbs of gear our trip was over. Pretty awesome whale watching trip.
Our next stop was Goðafoss, a large waterfall. Supposedly, the site where one of the Icelandic kings threw all of the statues of his old gods into the river when he decided to convert to Christianity. Did not see any of them, but totally saw a cave that a troll would love to inhabit.
And then we drove to our campsite. We had read about the area we were moving, the places near Lake Myvatn. There are tiny non-biting flies. Midges, no-see’ems, whatever they call them where you are from. We had heard they were annoying. How they got into everything. Well, they were not kidding. We have no photos from the area without them visible flying abound. Even on a walk to the bathroom you would be pulling them out of your ears or mouth. They were the worst. More intense then any other bugs I had ever seen. There was one info booth at the crater we went to the next day. And though there seems to be no flies in the booth, that was only until you turned around. That is when you noticed the booth had glass walls, glass covered with flies so thick you could hear them on the glass. It was gross. They were everywhere.
We had decent pizza from the camp and then retreated to the van. Killed any flies that came in with us and then slept.