We were up early again, although it wasn’t strictly necessary.  We’d chosen our hotel so that we’d be pretty close to Stuðlagil Canyon.  In our original itinerary, it was the last thing we would’ve done yesterday, but there just wasn’t enough time, so we changed it to be the first thing for today, and changed our hotel accordingly.  We weren’t really close to anything, so we figured as long as we left somewhat early, Stuðlagil Canyon wouldn’t be too busy.  We got up on our own at 06:30, and slowly got ready, as breakfast wasn’t until 07:30.  Last night was Red Hot Chili Peppers, and this morning it was Aretha Franklin.  Someone has good, eclectic, taste. 

It was only a 25 minute drive to the parking lot for Studlagil Canyon, so we got there right at 08:00.  We made sure to park on the East side, as that made the hike much shorter, and got us on the side with better views.  We had to pay to park on this side, but we felt it was worth the cost.  There was a waterfall with basalt columns right near the parking lot, but the rest of the hike was fairly boring.  We were walking along a gravel path wide enough for vehicles (although closed to vehicles), and it was pretty flat, so although “boring”, it made for an easy hike.

There were only two people at the canyon when we arrived, and they were standing above the “wall.”  When we were arriving, Justin could see where we needed to go.  On the left (as we were walking towards it) side of the river there was a wall that we could walk around, like a single wall in a run-down building.  We could see how on one side there was a green incline, and at the front there was a u-turn of sorts to some steps going down to the river.  Justin had seen enough videos to know this was almost certainly the route down to the best views.

Crystal chose not to join him, and she stayed up on the rim to take in the views.  Justin navigated the stream of water going down that green incline, and slowly went down step by step to the water.  Having long legs definitely helped with this.  Down at the bottom the scenery was absolutely amazing, and the wide angle camera was perfect for trying to capture the giant walls right across from one another (the river was probably only 4-5 meters across).  The sun was nice enough to come out, probably the first sun before noon this trip.  Justin was down in the canyon for maybe 20 minutes, and not a single other person came down there the whole time.

Back together on the top, we saw that they’re doing lots of work on the other side, to make it more accessible - stairs, viewing platforms, etc.  We had seen/read that the other side receives the vast majority of the visitors, but it has no access to the river level, just the rim.  Now it looks like it may be possible to get much closer to the river level in the near future.  As we walked back to the car, maybe 30-40 people were walking towards the canyon.  We also noticed some people opted for the free parking on the west side of the river, but it doubled the length of their hike.

We were probably back in the car by 10:00, give or take.  We had a long(ish) drive to our next stop, Dettifoss and Selfoss.  Relative to the past couple of days, this day had very few stops, relatively further apart, but they were “bigger” stops with more to see and do.  On the drive to Dettifoss we stopped briefly at a viewpoint called “White Chair Parking.”  There were sweeping views in every direction, like something from the Saddle Road on the Big Island.

We got to Dettifoss just a bit before noon, and the parking lot was basically full, but we found one spot after just a minute or so.  There were several paths with labeled directions, such as “Dettifoss viewpoint”, “Dettifoss up close”, and “Selfoss.”  We started with Dettifoss up close.  It was close, but looking across the river, we could see the viewing area on the east side was way closer.  When we were planning, we could see there were viewing areas on each side, and we chose the west side almost entirely because it had a paved road.  But now we were somewhat regretting that decision.

Dettifoss is the most powerful waterfall in Europe, and it was very impressive, but all the mist made it almost impossible to see.  So ironically, we probably spent more time watching Selfoss, the “smaller” waterfall just upstream, maybe a 5 minute walk.  After watching Selfoss for a bit, we went to the Dettifoss viewpoint, where we promptly got soaked and left almost immediately.  Next time we’ll go visit the east side.  [Accessing the east side from the west side requires going way north or way south to cross the river, then going back to the falls, so roughly an hour drive.]

We continued north on Road 862, and skipped Hafragilsfoss, as we’d just seen two other waterfalls.  We were also contemplating getting lunch in Husavik before our whale watching tour this afternoon, so we were trying to shave some time here and there.  There was a viewpoint we briefly stopped at where we were pretty sure we could see our next stop, Ásbyrgi Canyon.  This Canyon was famous for its tall rock cliffs and for having one of the few forested areas in Iceland.  But we’d already seen trees in several spots, including yesterday near Hengifoss and today near Studlagil.  So we decided to just briefly drive in to get an idea of the scale of the canyon (check out the car in this photo), and then we turned around and continued towards Husavik.

We stopped at a couple viewpoints on the north of the peninsula, including one called “Cliff Viewpoint” and another called “Öxarfjörður.”  The water was very turquoise, and the area looked much more tropical than it was.  We would’ve stopped at more places between Ásbyrgi and Husavik, but sadly there were hardly any places to pull off the road.  We arrived in Húsavik around 14:30.  We eventually found some free parking (our notes mentioned there was free parking behind the church, but we neglected to take account of that, oh well).

Our whale watching excursion was with Gentle Giants, which made us smile, because that was the name of the Great Dane rescue where we adopted our pup Toby from about 20 years ago.  At the check-in, on one of the forms we had to put our nationality.  We asked whether that referred to where we were born or where we currently live, and she said where we live.  When she checked our forms, she was surprised to see Spain.  We told her we live in Tenerife, and she told us she was from Tenerife, in Guía de Isora.  Small world.

It was hot (by Icelandic standards) at lunch, but it was nice to be outside.  We ate at Gamli Baukur, which was right down by the harbour.  Justin was happy to be able to grab a drink, as we’d be on the boat for enough time for the booze to leave his system.  The place to meet for our tour was literally next door, so when it was time we got up and told them our name.  We had to put on some super bright yellow and orange clothing over the clothing we were already wearing.  It was 23 and sunny outside, so it was awfully hot there for a minute until we headed out on the open ocean.

Our Zodiac had 12 guests, 4 people in front of us, and 6 behind us (a family from South America, we think).  The boat was arranged with rows of 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, and 3.  No one was allowed to sit in the front row, so we were in the first row of 3.  Because of this, we weren’t really blocked by the people in front of us, as the seats were a little more offset towards the sides.  Our first stop was what they called “puffin island.”  The entire island was populated with nesting puffins, and there were hundreds (probably thousands) between the island, the skies, and the sea.  We got close, but not really close enough to see the ones nesting on shore.  The seas were thankfully calm, so it wasn’t because of that.

After checking out the puffin island, we headed back south in search of some whales.  It was about 20 minutes before we found any, but when we did, it was two.  Our guide told us we were seeing Agatha (and a friend).  It being summer, these animals were feeding to gain weight, so they were just coming up for air every couple minutes, then going deep and showing us their tails before diving.  It was pretty cool, especially when one of the sightings was fairly close to the boat.

But then our guide told us that one of the other boats was watching a different whale, Primero, who apparently was jumping out of the water.  So we quickly made our way over there, and sure enough, he was breaching…repeatedly.  After about a half dozen jumps (that we saw, who knows how many there were before we arrived), our guide was genuinely worried for his wellbeing.  She surmised he was trying to get something off of his skin.  We probably saw about a dozen breaches in total, and we got way more than we bargained for when we booked this tour.  We just hoped we got at least one shot of him breaching in focus - taking sharp photos of a moving whale on a moving boat isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

After we got back in town, we went to Jaja Ding Dong Eurovision Bar, which celebrated Eurovision and the movie Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams made several years back.  At the bar we watched some of the videos on the TV, and we discussed whether we should start watching Eurovision to better fit in.  From Húsavik it was a 45 minute drive to our hotel (Mývatn - Berjaya Iceland Hotels).  Our hotel was right next to several sites we had on the itinerary for tomorrow, but the itinerary also mentioned that we could see them this evening as well to save time tomorrow.

We were going back and forth on what we wanted to see this evening, but the rain decided for us.  It wasn’t raining hard, but it was definitely more than mist, and it was constant.  We kept looking out the window at the hotel, and we were right above one of the spas, so we could see the constant pitter-patter of the raindrops in the spa.  As we waited, we went through the whale and puffin photos - some of them turned out great, so that made us happy.  Eventually we accepted we weren’t going to see anything else tonight, and just called it a day.  It seemed like we didn’t do a lot today, but that’s probably more of a reflection on the other days so far.