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.