Iceland: Day 3

My travel books didn’t mention anything about whale-watching so it wasn’t in my radar when I started planning my trip. But reading about the different day trips provided by Iceland Excursions got me really excited about whale-watching and I felt that I would regret it if I left the country without getting to see whales in their natural habitat. So I snuck it in my itinerary, my dwindling budget notwithstanding.

There are two whale watching tours that you can take via Iceland Excursions – one in Reykjavik and another one in Ólafsvík which is about a 3 hour drive from the capital. I saw a thread in forum section of Trip Advisor where someone was asking which place was better for whale watching, and practically everyone said Ólafsvík. So despite the fact that the Ólafsvík tour was a lot more expensive and that it would take a lot longer, I decided to take it anyway.

You are advised to dress warmly since it’s a lot colder at sea than on shore, and when our boat headed out, I wished I had brought gloves with me as well. It was freezing!

I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a Humpback Whale, but my basic requirement for this trip was to see a whale. Probably within half an hour of our boat heading out, we spotted a Minke whale. I had never heard of Minke whales prior to this trip but I believe that these are possibly the most frequently-seen whale in this area. The fact that we spotted several Minke whales that day seems to validate this.

I also got to see several puffins. It’s funny to watch these birds fly – they flap their wings very frantically. And whenever they are sitting on the water like a duck and the boat approaches, the puffins start flying away just above the water. And when they realize that they can’t move faster than the boat, the suddenly dive into the water.

We later on spotted a few white-beaked dolphins. Must have been a group of 4 of 5 of them. Unlike the Minke whales which show their backs for one brief moment before diving back into the cold water, the dolphins kept surfacing so we got to see a lot more of them than the whales.

On our way back to Reykjavik, I ask the driver if he could drop me off at The Perlan (or Pearl) instead of at my hotel and he agreed. I didn’t think I’d have time left to visit this place and I was told that the view here was quite good. The dome is actually a restaurant, and a very expensive one at that. A basic meal could cost you several thousand Icelandic Kroners (several thousand pesos) so I just stuck to looking at it from the outside and taking a few photos:

… and looking at the view.

The driver instructed me how to get back to the city center. He said it was walking distance. Can’t exactly recall how long it took me to get back – maybe half an hour to 40 minutes – but I didn’t mind the long walk.

Next stop: the Golden Circle tour.