We had a early arrival into Akureyri, 7 am and we met our fellow tour friends at 6:45 to be ready to go off all together for our day sightseeing.
It was a beautiful entry through a long fiord into the city and some up early were rewarded with a pod of five whales.
We were a group of 12 today and our guide/ driver Juergen was fantastic.
We covered so much ground today and as usual photos don’t do this incredible place justice.
It is summer here but of course we are close to the arctic circle ( we’re I the arctic circle the whole time we were in Norway) hence the need for warmer clothing.
We started off driving around the fiord and we did see a whale cruising through the water. They do say there is a 99.9% chance of seeing whales during the season.
Our first stop was the Godafoss falls, a similar shape to Niagara Falls but much smaller scale.
From there on we skirted Lake Myvatn, visiting Skutustaoagigar pseudo craters
Dimmuborgir
Namaskard geothermal area,
The above photo is James covering his nose from the strong sulphur smell coming from here. It was an incredible landscape and I could have posted so many photos of here and actually every place we visited.
The photo above is a of hot water pool, accessed only through cave opening. The water is a nice 40 degrees. This cave was inan area where we were able to see the tetonic plates which are moving 2 cms per year.
Another beautiful spot was a photo stop for around 20 minutes in this very serene and scenic spot.
I guess one of the highlights of the day was of course our visit to the Myvatn Nature Baths. We had one and a half hours here which was fantastic.
It has a feel of wool wash or fabric softener and was 40.1 degrees.
Juergen, sensibly made this our last stop so we were all relaxed and ready to go home to our ship after a fantastic 8 and a half hours exploring this stunning
around 10:30 pm as it is still light here we went outside to watch the waters for whales and were rewarded with sighting probably about five.
A perfect ending to our first day in Iceland.
Not bad when this is the view from your ship at 11pm at night.
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