Chocolate à chuva: Part X

Monday, July 21, 2008

Part X - Whale watching

(back with the Iceland trip reports but I just have to say ... Leonard Cohen last saturday, that was an amazing concert :)

While planning the Iceland trip one of the things I knew I wanted to take was a whale watching boat tour. Some years ago when we went to Newfoundland we tried to take a similar tour from Twillingate but we didn't get there on time (although we did see a whale quite visibly later on from the coast). Originally I thought we could take the tour from Olafsvik further in the South, but when we discovered there was a tour later that night from Husavik we decided to take that one instead. We should've known it wouldn't be easy when the girl at the ticket booth offered us some sea sickness pills on recommendation from the captain. Apparently the sea was kind of rough that day ...

After waiting for almost an hour for the previous tour to come back (a second sign something was up) we finally boarded the boat and were asked to dress in these padded dark blue suits that covered us from head to toe (in my case, even more than necessary since they only had extra large sizes), and then to wear a bright orange parka on top. I'm so glad they had those suits for us, because it was bitterly cold out in the sea and those really kept us warm, but we did look kind of funny :)

Because of the sea being so rough it wasn't the best of days for whale spotting. Even so, our wonderful guides managed to find a few humpback whales for us. Wow, it's all I can say ...