Wildlife is one thing we haven’t seen much of in Iceland. But of course it has that also – Iceland is the best!

So it’s whale watching we go, from the tiny port of Haugenes, a 45 minute drive up from Akureyri, the northern capital of Iceland. There’s our boat in the fjord:

We’re all in our warm, waterproof, rescue-enhancing, Teletubbie outfits pretending to look for whales:

But what we’re really doing is listening for the whale watcher up high to tell us at what o’ clock he sees a whale:

Worst case scenario is when you’re looking out the front of the boat (“12 o’ clock”), and he yells out something that’s behind you, like “7 o’ clock”. But I was able to pivot quick enough to get this shot:

Then we saw a bunch more:

Fun fact: That town you see in the background is actually Akureyri, the northern capital, and the place we drove from that morning to get to the board. Turns out the whales regular hang out right near the city, meaning we could have avoided the 45 min drive to the port, 90 min boat ride to the whales, and 90 min boat ride back 😆.

Anyway, it was worth it, especially for our final encounter. “Spout at 1 o’ clock!”:

And then, while the louspeaker was cranking Celine Dion, we got to experience this fella right up close:

We happy boaters then had a dance party on the long ride home, making it worth the long transit times:

Some VIPs:

Iceland is a beaut:

Back to the port (where we had a lunch of some very fresh fish-n-chips):