Whale Watching in the Harbour

This morning Rob and I rolled out of bed, put on as many layers as we could, and walked down to the harbor. We were some of the last people on the 9:00am trip out to the harbor.
They had these stylish jumpsuits for us on the boat. Not only did they keep us warm, they are buoyant! And reflective! True, as Rob said, they did make us look like Ewoks from behind, but I'm not posting those photos!
First we cruised out past the opera house with its marina of sailboats behind and we headed out to Akurey, the famed puffin island, which looked about like a giant cow pat floating in the harbor.
I had the binoculars and Rob had the camera. I saw about five puffins, but Rob thought I was one of the only people on our deck who did. I blew up this photo that he took, and you can see that he did too up there at the top, but it was really hard to differentiate between all the seabirds hanging around. They were cute. My favorite was hopping down the rocks to the water, flapping his wings like mad to ease his landing. The bottom bird doesn't look like a puffin (I think it's a seagull waiting for breakfast) -- but it shows the burrows where they lay their eggs. The guide described them as "two-bedroom apartments, each with one bedroom and one bathroom."
Then we set out to look for whales. I got a wee glimpse of some harbor porpoises, but they were gone in just a few seconds. I had also been reading the ships' blog and I knew that they hadn't been seeing very much in the last week. It was a rather tense boat ride out, everyone craning their necks and looking for anything.
Thankfully we didn't get too far before we saw some Minke whales -- we only saw Minkes, but we saw a lot of them, and we saw them a lot! Our guide lost count at 10 and I don't know how he could count them at all. I asked Rob "How does he know that's two whales and not 10 of them taking turns?"
Even our guide was audibly relieved. He'd chuckle each time he'd point one out. Near the end he said "There's one at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, or 1:00. Pick a number!"
Happy 15th Anniversary! Did you know the 15th year is the buoyant jumpsuit anniversary?
And we match Iceland's flag. 
The Reykjavík skyline.
And back in the harbor. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
Happy 15th Anniversary! You both look cute in bouyant jump suits, and very patriotic. I'm so glad you got to see some puffins. I read the library books about them while watching Joss play GeoTrax.

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