Bridge between continents and whale watching

While Miu was charging her batteries Stnz and I went for a quick trip to America followed by a whale watching cruise.

Leif the Lucky's bridge was a bit elusive place to find but it's in a rather convenient place if you're heading in or out from Keflavik airport so I'd recommend a visit, even though there isn't really much to see.

Landscape is quite barren. America on left, Europe (or Eurasia) on the right. Continents are growing apart by 2 centimeters each year, so sometime in the future the bridge will drop into the rift unless something is done to prevent it.

Some lovebirds had attached locks to the bridge railing on the midpoint. If you're in this kind of thing, this is your place as your lock won't be crowded out by others.

Afterwards we went to a whale watching cruise with Life of Whales and their ship Andrea.

The ship was quite nice, lots of seating both above- and below decks, drinks, snacks and souvenirs to buy and clean toilets, too! Weather was incredibly nice when we left Reykjavik harbour, only some light swells that rocked the ship gently on our way out. Our guide, Patrizia was very enthusiastic and explained everything we were seeing in very nice detail.

After pointing out some sights on land from the sea we soon found dolphins who were swimming around looking for food.

It almost looked like the dolphins preferred our ship as there was also another whale watching tour ship out at the same time, but the dolphins were keeping their distance from them.

After following the dolphins around for a while we turned to a new course trying to find whales. Quite soon we were again successful and spotted a minke whale in the distance.

Of course there were also quite a bit of birdlife to be seen and sometimes birds aren't really as graceful as you might think.

This particular puffin could've used a JATO pack to get airborne a bit faster...

On the way back the ship stopped for a while near an island which housed puffins and other birds. These puffins were far more afraid of people than the ones we saw on our earlier trip, so there wasn't much to see compared to that experience. If you can't afford the time to go to the countryside then this might be a good way to see some birds, but be sure to pack binoculars with you.

Low point of the trip was a parking ticket we had received while out to sea. It's all in icelandic so it'll be fun to try to pay it.

All pictures by stnz, my Ixus shutter lag was far too long to capture any good images while out to sea.