Iceland - Landscapes, Children, and Puffins

These Icelandic horses nicely framed a small church in the northeast highlands of Iceland.

Our cloudy weather continues.  We are in early tonight because it is raining.  We shot more puffin pictures today in a cold windy rain.  Got some great shots of flying puffins with fish and shrimp in their beaks.  Will put some of those pictures in my last blog from Iceland.

Sel old ruins on the east coast of Iceland.  While we were taking pictures here two horse came up to check out the camera equipment.  They wanted some attention.  In most locations the horses would run away as soon as we got out of the cars.

Strangest rainbows I have ever seen.  You can see the double rainbow plus another rainbow that connects the two.  Our guides had never seen this before either.

 Stapavík sea stack

We stopped at Djúpivogur fishing village to take pictures of the boats but the children playing and fishing on the docks were more interesting.  This boy caught a Koli which looks a lot like a flounder.

This boy was reaching under the dock for mussels.  They would stomp on the mussel to crack the shell and then use the meat for bait.

The mother of these two children was watching them closely. Along with their little sister these were the only children we saw with a life jacket.

Looking for fish.

I think they got tired of all of the photographers so they decided to hang out under the pier.

 Folaldafoss waterfall - There are waterfalls all over Iceland.  Many are quite large.

This waterfall and the one in the next picture are a 10 minute walk from each other.

There is still significant snow in the highlands.

 You can just make out the guest lodge we are stay at in the fog over the waterfall.  The lodge has two natural hot tubs.  One has a temperature of 100 degrees and the other is about 107 degrees. The 100 degree tub felt great. 

Horseshoe bend in a highlands stream.

One of the largest waterfalls we saw.  At the upper left you can see a photographer with his tripod.  This should give you a good sense of the scale.

I climbed down to the bottom of this waterfall.  You can see me in the lower left.  I guess I ended up in lots of photographs because it provided a good scale for the size of the waterfall.  This was my favorite waterfall.

This is the picture from the bottom.  I really like the basalt columns on the walls of the canyon.  The water was violently churning.  The noise level was extremely high from this view point.

We spent a few hours taking puffin pictures.  We rode on a wooden wagon behind a farmer's tractor to get to an bluff that was surrounded by wet lowlands.

The puffins had borrows on the top of the bluff.  They dive to fish and then bring their catch back to their babies.

They have short stubby wings so they aren't the best of flyers but it does enable them to be efficient divers.  

It was not unusual to see several fish or shrimp in their mouths.

This puffin is about to disappear into a burrow.  I thought we were lucky to see so many puffins until I found out there are millions of them on Iceland.  People use long nets on pole to catch them as they are flying by.  No they don't taste like chicken.  They taste a little fishy.  No surprise.

I hope we see some color in the sky tomorrow.  We are on the northeaster side of Iceland tonight in a fishing village.  Will have some pictures of boats and fish in the next blog.

That's all for now.