Day Five: Puffins, puffins, puffins!

We spent the night in Hofn in a converted milk factory that had shut down in 1999. It seems like a lot of places are being converted for tourism, like an old fish factory converted into a gift shop/lunch stop for large tour groups that we happened upon today. I heard that the recent boom in Icelandic tourism has caused some tension as tourists in camper vans and eager photographers traipse through people's private property in the countryside. We saw this sign at the canyon yesterday, and it was not the only sign I saw regarding not pooping on the land.

Today was a lot of driving on the coast that was socked in with fog. From postcards, it looked like a dramatically beautiful drive with the mountains dropping to the sea. But we couldn't see much of the mountains and barely saw down to the beaches below. Even the slightest break in the fog that gave us a peak of the mountain drew cheers!

We drove through small fishing villages, stopping at Djúpivogur, and fairly quickly ended up in Egilsstaðir.

The small fishing village of Djúpivogur. Apparently, on a clear day, you can see there is a snow capped mountain range behind this town. 

Langabúð originally dates back to 1790 and is Djúpivogur's oldest building

From Egilsstaðir, it was an hour and a half drive (70km) on some dirt road and some paved road to Borgarfjörður Eystri. The drive was gorgeous! The sun had come out and the snowy mountains were on full display. The drive wended up and down the mountain and into a beautiful valley.

The puffin viewing area was easy to find, a few kilometers out of town next to a small boat harbor. It looked like some camper vans were spending the night there, as there was a WC.

The puffin rock outcropping has several viewing platforms that were so close to the puffins it made me feel like I was intruding and perhaps habituating them to humans in an unhealthy way. They have little burrows in the hillside and we watched for more than two hours as the puffins flew out to fish and then brought back the fish to their young in the burrow. Puffins spend the autumn and winter in the open ocean and then return to coastal areas at the start of the breeding season in early April. They nest in clifftop colonies like the one we were at, digging a burrow in which usually a single white egg is laid. Puffins like to burrow on hills because they are not great at flying and it makes taking off easier. After about six weeks, the chick is fully grown and makes its way at night to the sea. It swims away from the shore and does not return to land for two to three years.

It was absolutely amazing and a highlight of the trip, if not the highlight.

A puffin with a bunch of fish in its mouth

The puffin can carry many fish at once because of its special beak. It can use its tongue to hold the fish against serrations on the upper mandible.