We drove about 40 minutes north of Akureyri to Dalvik to take a whale-watching trip on Arctic Sea Tours. Dalvik is a small fishing harbor.
We got to wear nifty insulated coveralls.
The boat took our group, along with another tour and a few extra people, across fairly calm waters nearly to the other side of the fjord where several humpback whales were.
The fjord is about 400 feet deep in this area so the whales would spend several minutes breathing near the surface before taking a long dive. This meant the captain could spot the whales surfacing and immediately head toward them. We would arrive quite close to them by the time they took their last few breaths and, because they were diving deep, usually raise their tails out of the water. The boat got very close to them on several occasions – I think closer than US regulations would allow. This was spectacular: being so close you could easily hear their exhalations and see some of their massive bodies under the water.
After a while we began heading back toward Dalvik, but we stopped for about a half an hour and pulled out some fishing poles for those who were interested. People caught several cod, and my wife caught a pollack as well as a cod.
As we continued back to port the first mate filleted them, a process which attracted a lot of attention from the terns and seagulls. When we returned to land the first mate grilled the fish for us.
We had the afternoon to ourselves so after the bus returned us to Akureyri, we wandered around town to explore and find a bit more lunch. We also tried some soft-serve ice cream – I had mine dipped in licorice topping. Other people in our group had tried a different shop in Stykkisholmur and thought the Icelandic soft-serve was creamier than Dairy Queen, but this shop’s was more like ice milk.
Overseas Adventure Tours had set up an evening talk at the university for us, but the university cancelled at mid-day. Margrét arranged a surprise alternative event for us: a visit with an artist in her studio. Another artist there was also an educator and a motorcyclist, and we had a conversation about old motorcycles and whether or not Iceland should join the EU.
Afterwards we picked a restaurant for dinner and found out just how expensive eating out in Iceland can be: $80 to split a pizza, bruschetta, and two glasses of wine.