Day 7 - Puffins and Walter Mitty

Today we left our stuff in Egilsstadir and went for a ride around the area. They were two main things we wanted to do, one see more puffins and the other visit the town where Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) makes one of the iconic moments of the movie which is when he skates down the mountain.

 

That meant a visit to Borgarfjordur Eystri (for the puffins) and to Seydisfjordur (for Walter Mitty).

The first stop would be 95Kms away but we had to brave beautiful scenery, sheep on the road, gravel roads and the ever present fog and cold conditions. We were looking forward to the way and it did not disappoint us ...

 

We even saw another motorcyclist on the road. We have not seen many. Less than 5 ...

 

The puffins are about 4Kms from town just next to a beautiful harbor where about 6-7 ships are stationed.

 

We felt inadequate with our small little camera when we saw couples and families all ready with monster zooms (the largest a 500 ...).

 

As it turned out no zooms were actually necessary, although they helped, as the puffins were within arm's length. We took lots of pics and here are some. They are amazing birds and we could have spent the whole day there just watching and enjoying how they went about living during the summer. Later on, we learned that they all come to land for about 2-3 months to lay one egg per puffin couple, and the rest of the time they spend away from shore, in the cold winter months. By their colors you would expect to find them in a warm rain forest. Amazing !

 

We took many more photos and videos so if you like them and would like to see more of them click HERE where we have all the photos and videos of the day.

They were many other type of birds around and we took some more photos. See if you can identify what they are ...

 

Eventually we had to leave (reluctantly) as we were getting hungry, so we went down to the local town and looked for an interesting place to eat. We found one ... The Alfa Cafe !

 

With our stomachs a bit fuller, we were ready to brave the cold passage of the mountain to go to our next destination.

 

One of the most interesting things about Iceland is everywhere you ride they are waterfalls, that you can see from the road. Some are mentioned with signs by the roadside, some you have to walk a lot. We decided to stop on a couple of them on the way, and believe me we could have taken a full day just watching waterfalls In this area, if we wanted ...

 

Also took some nice pics of the bike as she waited for us ...

 

We then arrived at Seydisfjordur. Very quaint and beautiful little town.

 

All of these little towns have beautiful churches. This one was no exception.

 

We had heard about this little bistro (Skaftfell Bistro) and stopped by to check it out. We were very happy we did. How can a place so far off the map have such a great atmosphere. We absolutely loved it and stayed there until it was getting late. Also had dinner which we enjoyed. Specially the beer ;-).

 

The way back was tricky as temperatures were down at 3C and with wind and very icy conditions on both side of the road we were worried the road would ice up.

 

In the end all went well and we arrived safe at the Guesthouse in Egilsstadir.

I will finish, in a fitting way for another fantastic Icelandic day, with a quote from Walter Mitty (as written by James Thurber): "To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life."

 

 

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