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.

Garðar BA 64 ship wreck

The ship was built in 1912 in Norway and served as a whaling ship before it got to Iceland and was used for fishing from 1945. At first, it was a steam engine ship with masts for sails, but it was refurbished and served as a fishing ship for herring with a diesel engine.

Now it lies on the beach of Skápadalur, a valley off Patreksfjörður in the West Fjords, rusting away.

Ok, yeses I believe you. Hey, there's a nice hole to climb inside *goes*

Getting to the ship was the hardest part, the hole I climbed in had sharp edges, which resulted to some really nice bruises on my legs, but totally worth it. Fivefingers gave a nice sense of the floor - where to put your foot down to, and where not. Mainly the floor was in fairly good condition.

Door to inside, didn't use it

Ship's deck

First things I saw after entering

Got up

Saw a broken window of the mess hall

Walked to the table, I think that the paint jar is from the time when the ship was abandoned

On this point I got a little concerned of the floor,
re-checked all my steps at this point before putting any weight on my leg

The toilet was in good shape!

Mess hall was in pretty good condition

The stove in the galley

Rest of the galley

From this point (to the left of the galley), I didn't see wise to enter without proper lights with me, and of course, they were in the car

I tried to get some shots with the ambiance light, they aren't focused but that kinda makes some nice effects on them..

very narrow hallway next to the mess hall

And another next to it

Sticker in the mess hall

Clearly, someone is still taking care of the paint outside
pic by stnz

Great shot of the ship's bow by stnz

One place more I want to explore later on with better time :).

Night activities

We weren't ready to go to bed and decided to see if we would find something to photograph or to do. It was planned to do some geocaching, go to a bar and continue photographing the graffiti we didn't photograph last time.

Well we did the first, found 2/3 we were looking for. After that we got hungry and only open place we could find didn't want to serve any customers. It was kinda odd, there was several people trying to get food from the drive-in and got away without service. Tried to find an open Metro-joint, which is the re-branded version of McDonald's. No luck.

Lastly, we had two choices: 24/7 Dominoes or Hagkaup. I wasn't interested of getting a pizza, so wandering around in the store for a while we settled for some fries and almost done hamburgers. Have to say that there was many compelling healthy choices for a lunch, but craved for fries.

Soft bun, cheese, bacon and sauce

5 mins fries ready to go to the oven

Some moments later because of our great chef Stnz, our late night snack was ready:

stnz's meal

My meal

It was kinda good, better maybe than most of the burger joints can offer 3am on Saturday morning.. I'm a bit bummed that we didn't go to a bar, but maybe I'll survive. Maybe I'll find my Icelandic guy next time ;).

Oh, and some random shots from this night too:

We know that stnz is into sheep, and on this trip, the guys decided I'm into cucumbers,
so I was banned to get near of this, even if it's wrapped. That bastard.

This art in our house gave me an idea to photograph some crows and make one of those myself.
Unfortunately, we haven't seen them much, only couple and those for a few seconds :(

One way gas stations - one more things which we don't have back at home

The Sun Voyager - Sólfar

While driving in the city we came across one of the sculptures I fell in love in February, but didn't have the time to photograph them. Even while we were hungry (I had only eaten some chocolate today while processing pictures) stnz was kind enough to give me time to take pics of it.  With flash the pictures weren't nice because of the light rain (you can see the drops in the pictures) but with ISO4000 I managed to get something without taking the tripod out (too hungry for that, again :D).

Ok, now it's time for me too to go to bed, so we can wake up tomorrow at some point and go and hug a lamb. Apparently it's a local event, and because stnz love sheep, we have to go there :). I hope we have time for some sightseeing (=taking pictures) in the Reykjavik city, because that is a thing I've wanted to do and it didn't happen last time. 

Damn I love this place, I would so want to move here, job hunt continues..

- Miu

Some local attractions, also from the sky

Sorry for the silence, the days have been long and the mobile services have been little wonky time to time, mostly when we visited the west side of the island. High mountains do have some affect on things..

Flugskóli Islands

But back to business, me and stnz went flying on Wednesday, got a Cessna from the friendly people of Flugskóli Íslands. The plane type was the same Cessna 172SP as last time, but this time with working autopilot (ok it tried to kill us sneakingly turning to some near by mountains). This time our flight plan was to visit Eyjafjallajökull and come back. We had a little lighter load this time, so it was possible to make a longer flight.

The flight control asked about our route, and the conversation ended up with some amusement in both ends:
Flight contol: "What route are you taking"
Stnz: "Route four outbound and inbound"
Flight control: "Where are you heading after that?"
Stnz: "To Eyjafjalla... what ever"
Flight control: *laughter* "Ok, Eyjafjallajökull and back"

The scenery was completely different than the flights we took in February, even when on the second flight most of the snow near Reykjavik was melted. There was now some pretty awesome river deltas all around, and they looked amazing in the black sand.

We also saw some waterfalls, they looked little different from the sky

Skógafoss

Same one from the ground

pic by stnz

pic by stnz

Gljufurarfoss

When flying, I noticed that our flight plan was nearing the DC-3 wreck. Stnz first disagreed but almost instantly noticed I was right. Of course we had to fly over the DC-3 wreck:

And something from the ground earlier day:

Pic by stnz, me and Bror

Pic by stnz

Cockpit from the back

And of course I had to go inside of the left wing

Nacelle junction box untouched

Heading back right when trying to land, local pilot decided to do engine run-up. They were placed in a way on the airfield that the gust of air came straight for us. That was fun - even the flight control asked did we encounter a turbulence or what happened. Fortunately stnz is a good pilot and we and the Cessna got back down safely.

You can see the plane on the right

Oh, and added bonus: Sports Tracker works also with flights. Not sure about the calories though: