We had an appointment for a whale watching trip planned for the morning, but before we got to that we made a stop at our biggest waterfalls yet – Goðafoss, (“Falls of the gods”).
It’s been getting noticeably cooler each day as we move farther North around the ‘ring road’. It’s been wet, although we haven’t yet hit any real rain.
Goðafoss, was quite the place. The falls are just spectacular. It gets its name from the legend that the locals threw the statues of their old gods into the falls when Iceland converted to Christianity in the year 1000.
We didn’t stay long as we needed to be in Húsavík for our whale and puffin watching trip. Húsavík is considered as the whale watching capital of Europe.
We were all dressed as warm as we could get, but our boat captain had even more protection for us. A heavy set of coveralls, topped off with what I could call a whaling slicker. Not exactly fashion runway styling, but definitely a must have!
I don’t remember exactly how long we were on the water, but the time seemed to fly by. First we sailed by a small island in search of puffins. There were a lot of them flying around, but without stopping to go ashore, getting any good pictures was almost impossible. So, insert stock photo here please 🙂
We then headed out to see and it was another 20-30 minutes before we saw a whale. A juvenile I believe. They were doing some shallow dives, just feeding near the surface so we had to be on our toes to even get a glimpse.
You might know that whales can be identified by the markings on their tails; each whales’ is unique. I think this one might be Bob 🙂
Húsavík also has what is said to be the most beautiful wooden church in Iceland, built in 1907.
After our whale watching excursion, we were off to more water; next stop Dettifoss.
Dettifoss is considered the greatest and most majestic of Iceland’s waterfalls. At 44 meters (roughly 145ft) high, and with an average volume of 212 tons of water per second going over the falls, the ground shakes with the force of it. That would be roughly 50,800 gallons of water-per second- crashing over the falls!
From here we set off to our next B&B near Lake Mývatn, where tomorrow we’re headed to see some volcanic craters and lava fields!
