Whale Tails in Husavik

We’d heard that the town of Húsavík is the whale watching capital of Iceland, so we thought we’d give it a try. That was a good call. We went out in a high-speed RIB (rigid inflatable boat), like a large Zodiac boat, but with more comfortable seating. The trip included a stop at Puffin Island, where there were hundreds (thousands?) of puffins on the land, in the sea and flying overhead. That was impressive, but we didn’t get the close-up views like we did at Dyrhólaey.

From a distance we saw white-beaked dolphins jumping and spinning like the spinner dolphins we’ve seen in Hawaii. Alas, as we drew nearer, we disrupted their mating behavior and they were mostly only visible as fins floating on the surface.

But soon, we spotted a blow spout and the boat zoomed over to let us watch a humpback whale feeding. We watched it surface and dive again a couple of times, then moved on in our circuit of the sea around Husavik’s bay. One more really good humpback sighting topped off a great experience!

(Apologies for the photo quality—it’s hard to catch them at the right time!)En savoir plus