Snæfellsnes Peninsula

We didn’t write anything yesterday, mostly because it was more or less a typical “travel day”—long, drawn-out, and kind of boring.

We had planned to have another go at the bird-cliffs in the morning, but…guess what?  It was raining!  So we packed up, drove to Patreksfjörður to tank up and pick up some supplies (not easy to find a grocery…only happened because we’ve learned the Icelandic word “verslun”, which was hand-painted on a building on a side street), and drove off to catch a ferry to Stykkishólmur.  We got to the ferry dock FIVE hours early, just like several other small touring groups we keep meeting.  It was a bit challenging to waste five hours, without getting so far out of range we couldn’t make it back, plus Sheila wasn’t feeling very well, and so wasn’t really up for hiking, or long walks, which we could have done.  So we drove around, and Lars took pictures. Iceland has lots of waterfalls that are especially striking when snow is melting rapidly, so, here are a few more. We have been seeing bunches of white swans in green fields ever since we picked up our rental auto, this time Lars took their picture.

The sheep are grazing on the beach…eating seaweed?

They should call Iceland “Waterfall-land”—these don’t even have names, and are probably only “spring thaw” waterfalls.

The ferry Baldur left Brjánslækur (BRYOWNS-lie-kur) a bit after 6, stopping briefly at Flatey.  There are about 2,500 islands in Breiðafjörður Bay, most barely above the sea.  Flatey is the only one still inhabited year-round.  We let off a couple of passengers, and picked up a dumpster.

When we finally got to Stykkishólmur at 9 p.m., we still had an hour drive to our hotel.  This is really the only thing Nordic Vistor could have done better on, though we certainly can’t complain about Guesthouse Virkið otherwise.  The room is beautiful, we have our own bathroom, and it’s well-situated for exploring Snæfellsnes (SNY-fet’ls-ness).  Which we did today, after collapsing into the king-size (!!!) bed after a tiring day.

We woke up to…rain.  The locals ALL say there hasn’t been a spring like this in living memory.  Just our luck.  Anyway, since “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing”, we set off.   Arctic Terns don’t seem to mind the weather…here they are lined up on the runway, ready for take-off.  Snæfellsjökull was playing hide-and-seek today…this is where Jules Verne set the scene for “Journey to the Center of the Earth”.

We drove all the way out to the very tip…well, you can’t drive all the way, so we walked part of it between showers.  There was, of course, a lighthouse…there is quite the string of them all around the country.  And there were ruins of some fishermen’s huts…no idea how old they were.  And the “ancient well” called Fálki (FOWL-key), or “Falcon”.

And…spring has come to the lava fields!

And speaking of lava fields, Lars thinks they’re pretty ordinary stuff, while Sheila finds the textures fascinating.  So, by request:

Note that THESE columnar basalts are only about 4-6” across…baby basalts.

And there were bird-cliffs, not as impressive as Látrabjarg, but more accessible:

Can you see the 3 birds flying into the “cave”? Flying through this “cave” seemed to be a favorite thing for some of the local sea birds. The two big white dots in the upper left picture appear to be a newly-mated pair of razorbills that seem to have found a totally new “house”.  They have not even been there long enough to “white-wash” the front entrance!  Razorbills seem to be the “cave-dwellers”...see top middle pic.  The fulmars have their little nooks (lower left), whereas some other species make do with most any little flat place.

Three more random shots from the day—the church at Stykkishólmur, the rock formation “Kirkufell” (Church Mountain), and “Roadhenge” at a pull-out.

Oh, Wow!

Sheila says this at least once a day…Lars isn’t really given to that sort of expression of amazement. The scenery here just keeps tossing up one gorgeous vista after another.  Today the wind was much less, but by the time we had eaten breakfast we figured most of the cliff birds would have left to feed.  So, we went for a walk on the beach…well-dressed and in hiking boots.

Then we went for a drive, up a side road (which turned out to be in better shape than Highway 63).  We came to a place where we could overlook the famous Red Sands (Rauðasandur), but it didn’t seem worth the effort to drive all the way down to the beach…the road was rocky and had some major switchbacks.  Our hostess Birna says we should have continued…it’s her favorite place, down on the beach.

The drive involved a certain amount of stopping the car, walking along to road to see where it went and then walking back to the car and driving a bit farther.  After last evening’s windblown hike along the cliffs, and several short walks this afternoon, we decided that two weeks of driving wasn’t the best preparation for hiking, and headed back for lunch and a short nap.

Just learned that Hotel Breiðavík is the westernmost hotel in Europe.  If, in fact, Iceland IS in Europe…?

After dinner, we layered up again and headed back to the bird cliffs.  There is a very informative sign just as you get there:

Encouraging, eh?  But as it turns out, even Sheila, who is NOT fond of heights, managed to get pretty close when enticed by puffins, razorbills, and guillemots.  And grey seals…which were a LONG way down in the water, so, no pics of them.

Puffins are so funny when they fly—they fling themselves off the cliff-tops, flapping madly like baby birds.  They were busy nest-building…we were close enough to hear them ripping up the grass as they filled their beaks before hopping down to their burrows.  They nest near the tops of the cliffs, so they can dig burrows.

The razorbills seemed happy to be reunited after the long winter at sea…there was lots of preening and bill-rubbing as they greeted one another.

And then there are the Guillemots:

They just pile in wherever there’s room, and sometimes where there isn’t, causing a great deal of squawking…the noise is amazing.

It was much warmer, and almost no wind, so we were moving slowly along the cliff tops.  And then it began to rain…everybody hung in for quite awhile, but it eventually got to be too much.  Unfortunately, Lars’ camera started not behaving as it should, apparently it is not well adapted to 10C rain, but after some well chosen curses and gnashing of teeth from Lars, we still got some good pics.  That would be the editorial “we”…Lars has taken almost all of the pictures.