Showing posts with label Snæfellsness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snæfellsness. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

A Whale of Tale

Last week my new photographer friend, Natsha, invited me on a last minute trip to go whale watching. I was all “Meh, who cares? They're just whales. I've been to SeaWorld so I'm good.”, but then I didn't have anything better to do so I went*.


(*All lies. I was so excited.)

Early Sunday morning the 5 of us packed up in our rented car and headed to Grundarfjöður on the Snæfellsness peninsula. We had heard there were orcas (aka, killer whales... aka, killer whales isn't a correct name... aka, killer whales is a way better name) in the harbor about a week prior, so we crossed our fingers and hoped they decided to stay long enough for us to catch a glimpse.


There were no whales in the harbor when we arrived.

Luckily we booked a boat tour with LákiTours so we could go further into the ocean looking for them. They also gave us these freeeeaking sexy jumpsuits to wear to keep our bajeebers from freezing off.


We sailed out and around to the next fjord over, only to not see any whales there either. I was preparing myself for the disappointment to go home empty carded of any killer whale photos, while appreciating the feast my eyes had around me in the form of beautiful Icelandic mountains (Er, John Snow anyone?).


But then the captain's voice rusted out of the loud speaker; there were a few whales out in the distance at 1:00. I joined the choir of desperate shutters in praise to this news. We chased around this pod of 5-8 orcas for about a half hour until we were informed that more had just arrived in the harbor at Grundarfjöður. And by “more” they meant around 30-40. Whaaaat? Yep. I ended up seeing a lot of killer whales that day (I also saw a lot of jerk seagulls photo-bombing the crap out of my life, too).









Needless to say (thankfully, seeing as I'm really tired and need to go to bed, like, 2 hours ago), it was an incredible day trip seeing such graceful and beautiful animals. I couldn't have asked for better weather or better company. 

I just love so much about the things my life in Iceland chooses to be.