Iceland Day 3: Whale Watching

Really, to do proper Icelandic whale watching you have to go to Husavik on the north coast. We seriously considered it, but we would have had to fly (or spend a full day on a bus) to Husavik with our gear, stay there overnight...and in the end with everything else we wanted to do, we didn't want to take that much time out of our trip.

Instead, we went with Elding Whale Watching out of Reykjavik itself. This is a reputable operator which also has the appealing policy of allowing people to reschedule on another trip if they have to cancel due to weather. This is the North Atlantic, so boy do they get weather.

Yeah. No whales. We did see whales, but they were too busy eating to hang out with us (as whales have been known to do - off Alaska we had a female humpback circle the boat for quite some time for no reason other than, as far as we could tell, to say hi to the silly humans).

And boy did we get weather. I was expecting Alaska cold, but the cruise we went on there was much more sheltered.

Much more sheltered.

Here's the action plan. You dress as if you were going for a trek to Antarctica. Then you don the partial survival suit they provide.

Then you get cold.

Okay, we did have weather. We had a lot of rain and some pretty choppy seas. I was mildly seasick despite my ginger pills, but I get seasick pretty easily. We saw several Minke whales - pretty small by whale standards, a small pod of harbor porpoises and more gannets than one would ever want to see. And we got cold.

Afterwards, we fled to Svarta Kaffid for some of the most amazing soup I've ever had in my life. Or maybe it just tasted that way after being out on the cold water. And sprayed on. And rained on. Yet, somehow it was a lot of fun.