The next morning took us to Vestmannaeyjar. Vestmannaeyjar is an island group off the southwest coast, the largest of which is Heimaey, widely known for its populations of migratory birds, and also for erupting with no warning in 1973 and forcing a five month evacuation of all its inhabitants. We were going there for the puffins.
The puffin is a small, entertaining bird that lives its life at sea except for four months every year when massive flocks of them find the most unfriendly forbidding cliffs in the world and then raise their young there in burrows in the ground. Mid August, the last of the nesting puffins are going back into the sea until next summer. I’m not sure anyone knows quite where they go, but they leave, like clockwork. And we’d been told they were going.
I should take responsibility for the whole puffin thing. I was in Newfoundland ten years and never clapped eyes on a puffin; when we visited St. Mary’s Bird Reserve years later the gannets were in season, the puffins were out. So if there was a puffin in Iceland, I was going to see it.
(There was, and I did). Just in case the suspense was getting to be too much.
The weather was Maritime; when we got deposited at the new, swoop-roofed ferry terminal, I had to walk around on the breakwater because it was blocking the view. Of course it was only blocking the view of a few hundred meters of ocean, but it still felt elemental to walk around on the recently built breakwater in the insistent wind and rain. Vestmannaeyjar used to have a much longer ferry route to reach it, a three hour trip from þorlákshöfn, but lucky for us, a month ago the new, half-hour route went live from Bakki.
More due to boredom and inattention than anything, I did a really stupid thing in the ferry terminal. We had to wait a fair piece for the next boat, and after getting thrilled on the seawall, there was nothing more to do but eavesdrop on the mysterious international football players in the lobby. Their presence there made no sense. There were men from more than two continents, switching among at least four languages that I could distinguish, and half of them were wearing their kit. Obviously a team, headed to what? Play in the rain on Heimaey?
Derek amused himself with the talking Icelandic robot vending machine. Feed it a Visa card and let it serve you! So what with all the entertainment, when time rolled around to move upstairs to load in, I just walked away from my journal notebook that I’d set down on the seat beside me.
I’d “prepared” for this eventuality on the transAtlantic flight by writing a heart rending appeal to anyone who might find it, should I lose it, to return it to me, and including every scrap of contact info possible.
From past experience, I know that on a big trip like this, the stimulation barrage is completely overwhelming, and I have to furiously empty my brain’s short-term storage onto paper every night to save the day’s points of interest. Either my RAM’s not adequate or I absorb too much to hold – I don’t know, but I have to do this. In two weeks, I just will not remember the way we heard a horse whinny from the back of a horse trailer traveling the other direction at 100kmh. It sounded like a horse traveling supersonically. And I remember that because I write it down, see? Horse whinnied. So, the notebook I store all these little sensation triggers in is indescribably valuable to me, and I’d said so on the inside cover of this one. Of course, I’d only put two days in it so far.
I seem to have a thing with losing small notebooks filled with really precious stuff, but I always get them back. No big whoop, I thought when I missed it after the boat took off. We’d be going right back through the same place on the way back; I’d pick it up then.
There was a wee bit of a sea on for our crossing. Derek took an insurance Gravol and I don’t get seasick, so we snickered good at ourselves and everyone else lurching tentatively around, tumbling sideways from one handhold to another, more often than not just running into the opposite wall, oh! and then the first wall again, oh!….
There was a contingent of “I will survive”s clinging to posts at the fore of the cabin, staring unblinkingly at the mostly invisible horizon with clenched jaws as the bow heaved up and down. And the soccer team was roaming around in shorts and socks, squawking in many languages at getting tossed around and at the sideways rain outside. My mouth hurt from laughing.
Disgorged onto Heimaey (no idea where the footballers disappeared to), the rain and fog and wind somewhat influenced our unanimous decision to not camp for the night, made very quickly at the door of the first hostel we passed. Thrilled with that moment of brilliance, we left our gear and ventured out in full rain garb to see Heimaey on foot.
“See” turned out to be far too strong a word. The fog was Maritime too. Half way up Helgafell, logic kicked in and we asked “for what do we climb?” We could barely see where we were going, enough to recognize it as an incline, but if we continued to the top, we’d only know it was the top because there was no higher ground. Were we climbing to have done it, or for the view?
We “saw” most of Heimaey in the next few hours just like Helgafell- a short ways ahead of us at a time. In this way, we saw some horses, saw some farms as we trespassed through them, saw the landfill, saw more football pitches than make sense for such a small island, all empty (where was that team headed?) and saw a lot of hraun. Hraun = lava.
We pretty much had no idea where we were, and vaguely wandered back into town after getting really, really wet. Wet doesn’t really translate in photos, but rain drives in through zippers and drips off your face down your neck and hair, and leeches up your sleeves inside the jacket from bare hands, and the whole protective shell you’re wearing delivers all the water you get in the way of down to your boots, where it keeps trying until it breaches whatever waterproofing is making an effort there, promptly turns your boots into small swamp replicas and starts climbing your socks, going “that’s right, we’re gonna get your pants too.”
We rainchecked the bird cliffs, since it seemed a little bit dim to go walking around looking for deadly dropoffs in low visibility, and went back to the hostel to “dry out”. We’ll get you later, puffins. “Dry out”- also too strong a phrase. Cranking the radiator to its cautionary max and opening a window to let out the steam only raised the ambient humidity to about equal the outdoors. But we warmed up, and ate dinner, gathered info (no one had seen puffins today; forecast for tomorrow was more of same), and started a load of laundry.
The promise of the same weather tomorrow meant we may as well go out again tonight to hunt the puffins and then leave tomorrow am for bluer skies. So, back into dry first layers and wet outer layers and back into the dusk in a different direction, hunting puffins. A long trudge, featuring more soccer pitches and more weird sculpture.
We found them! We found the puffins! We found all the puffins that were left, I think. About a dozen of them. They were cute, and entertaining, and brightly sleek in spite of the totally grey conditions. I got the impression that the paltry few that were left were just saying their last goodbyes, that they were taking off for their final flights that very night.
Anti-climactic doesn’t quite cover it. After all that trudging around thinking about my boots being from Squornshellous Zeta, by the time we saw the damn puffins, it was like Thank God, now we can go fall into bed. Puffins, check. Now can I be dry?
We snuck up on them very carefully and… these were the best pictures we got.
Heimaey is on my to do list, although with my weak stomach there’s no good way to get there! I’m currently reading a book that is set there.
Hello, we will be visiting the Westman Islands in May and were wondering exactly where on Heimaey you found the puffins?
Thanks!
On the west side of the island. Go past the golf course and then turn south. There are also supposed to be big populations on the south end of the island, but walking is limited there to not tread on the bird burrows (not puffin season when we were there 2012).
Thank you so much for the info Selka! Wish us luck!