Life at the 66th Parallel - a photo on Flickriver

Sometimes you just have to allow yourself a morning off. The question of whether we were going to take on the ring road and circumnavigate the whole of Iceland had been one of much debate in the months beforehand as we pored over maps and Flickr posts. Maybe we should just stick to the south with its seemingly endless sequence of highlights instead? Or perhaps we could make a decision whether to carry on going or double back when we got as far as Eystrahorn? But we wanted the Black Church and Kirkjufell too, so Snaefellsnes was definitely on the agenda.

In the end, Mads Peter-Iversen's YouTube post at Aldeyjarfoss sealed it. A gorgeous waterfall pouring into a basalt ringed saucepan 25 miles south of the ring road in the north of the country seemed to good to miss in what we knew might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. We would start on the peninsula of Snaefellsnes and then head north.

Here's Aldeyjarfoss. I think it was worth seeing. It's a faff to get there, but then aren't the best places often like that?

www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/48358828342/in/album-...

I'm not sure at what point the idea occurred to us that we might go whale watching. Maybe there was a pamphlet at the apartment in Reykjavik where we stayed on the first night after arriving at 1am. Perhaps we spotted something in the guidebook to the ring road - I really don't remember. But somehow once the idea was planted in our heads it germinated and grew, so that by the time we returned to the campervan after the midnight adventure at Aldeyjarfoss we found ourselves sipping on cans of Viking lager at 2am and booking our tickets aboard the good ship Salka. A few hours later we were bound for Husavik on the north coast.

We were the first pair on board the Salka, where we were greeted by a charming young lady who instructed us to don all manner of bright orange waterproof garments and buoyancy aids that were guaranteed to save us in the event that either of us went overboard - unless the cold killed us of course. She recommended trying not to fall in - we nodded earnestly that it might be a good idea to stay on board until we returned to Husavik. And then we headed out across the bay, snow capped mountains on either side of us through a shroud of unending drizzle towards a place just below the beginning of the Arctic Circle, more than 66 degrees north of the Equator. Sometimes I like to look at a map of the world to see just how far we'd travelled, and how many (or how few) people in the world were further north than us at that moment. Groups of puffins raced low across the water towards the distant mountains, while lone terns and fulmars plotted their own courses around us. The rain cleared, replaced by warm sunshine. Even now, that morning feels as if it happened in a dream.

Whale sightings can never be guaranteed, but we were told that it would be an unfortunate day if we were to see none at all. The lucky four percent will get to witness a Blue Whale, the size of which still seems almost impossible to comprehend, despite having been told the exact dimensions by Sir David Attenborough enough times on television before. We saw four humpback whales, regular visitors to this place where the currents converge and bring the feeding bonanza that makes their presence here certain enough to draw a number of small vessels full of hopeful visitors each day.

It was a morning quite like no other I can recall, and a reminder that photography adventures can be interrupted by stuff that wasn't on the drawing board when the adventure was being pulled into shape. It's about as close as I can get to a Chistmassy type of image because we get snow about once every ten years where I live and it's usually in February if it happens at all.

So with that, and for those of you who celebrate it, I wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas. Hopefully that new camera / lens / tripod /filter kit or whatever is lying there under the tree waiting for you to open it tomorrow morning. For a while, let's forget all the madness and dream of those future adventures to come.

Taken in: Iceland / Northeast / Flateyjarhreppur (show map)

Taken on: July 16, 2019

Tags:

Iceland

Husavik

whale watching

Humpback

Mountain

snowy mountains

Water

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Sea

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earthoutdoors

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Sets appears in: • Iceland 2019

Groups appears in: • Iceland. • Iceland - Landscape more » • Nature and Photography • Flickr Social Club • Seascape Central • Flickr Social « less

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