The Expedition trip… that wasn’t! 3/11

July 3, Grundarfjordur – July 4, Vigur Island

Our first stop was in Grundarfjordur where our included “experience” was a 7 hour tour included the circumnavigation of the peninsula of the Snæfellsnes National park which is the only coastal national park in 🇮🇸.

Though it was cool and breezy, we lucked out with periods of sun and beautiful skies.

The first stop on our tour was at Djupalonssandur where we had spectacular view of the ice cap peak as well as the black sand beach with what remains of a ship wreck. The skies made fabulous photos here. We took a short hike down to the black sand beach with rusted remains of wrecked ships. 

Little orange specs in the photo upper right are Seabourn passengers in their Haley Hansen jackets. 

Our next stop was at the rocket-shaped lighthouse at Malarrif. Our tour guide kept telling us that the weather today was exceptional. The expedition team member told us about a zip line. Lisa actually cranked up courage to ride it and for Joe to document it. It was a pretty tame one and just about my speed. 

From there we walked along the coastal cliffs for about a mile enjoying the scenery but it was super breezy. The clouds reflected the high winds.

Lenticular clouds indicating high winds (photo below left). The expedition leader told us that when they see these clouds over an area where they plan a hike they make alternate plans.

We then boarded the bus for an hour drive to the Foss hotel for lunch. We started with a delicious cream of cauliflower soup. Followed by cod, blé and vegetables.

Our final stop was a quick one at Kirkjufellsfoss (church mountain waterfalls) before returning to the ship. The waterfalls were spectacular as you could walk down along the 3 levels of waterfalls. 

Upon our return we headed down to the mud rooms to fit our waterproof boots (again Seabourn provided) that we’d store in our lockers with our cabin number (below). Each time we return from a zodiac trip we wash our boots off and leave them in our designated lockers so we don’t trek mud and dirt through the ship.

Our mud boots are in our cabin #724 cubby hole (top right). There are two mud rooms 1 on each side of the ship and which are separated by cabin numbers.
Each mud room has these boot washing stations so you can store your clean boots back in your cubbyhole.

Joe on bow watch as we departed. The weather was wonderful but can (and sadly will) change in moments notice.

The fellow on the left is John our ships videographer (photo above right). He films the entire journey and at the end of the trip shows the edited video which we will all be able to download as a souvenir of our voyage.
How cool is that?
The expedition team member in the red jacket on the right is Matthew who grew up in … Sonoma. He’s a general naturalist, zodiac driver and certified wildlife security person (with rifle on sorties in Greenland). 🥹 

We then went to the Discovery theatre for our daily debrief and briefing for the next day which was supposed to be Vigur Island. Here, the expedition leader Sara, spoke about the voyage planning tools they use. In this case it’s the ice condition charts. This was the first sign of something might be amiss with our itinerary. 

…and where she Segway’s in to the ships decision to delay our arrival to eastern Greenland as much as possible as the ice has been slow in melting (read: enabling even polar class ships like ours to get through). So instead of heading over to Greenland tomorrow after our stop in Vigur Island we would circumnavigate Iceland stopping in all the ports that we were planning on visiting at the end of the trip. 

The ship worked hard to reschedule port arrivals and tours for the next week. Like Seabourn did on our trip on the Encore in October they worked through the night to reorganize so many small details that many people aren’t aware of. Obviously, since this was peak season for cruise ships in Iceland there were a few ports where there wasn’t any room for us and so they substituted similar ports in those areas and rescheduled the land excursions. 
So, basically, throw away the itinerary at the beginning of this post and we were to follow the one that she has displayed behind her right shoulder. 

Sara then filled us in on plans for our visit to Vigur Island the next day. Vigur is a tiny private island that farms eider down for use in making duvets. It’s a birders heaven. 
As noted in the slide presentation there was no free roaming of the island permitted. We would be zodiac’d ashore in our color coded timed groups and we would be met by a member of the family to minimize the impact on the nesting birds. 

Thousands of Arctic terns and Atlantic puffins are also among the many species of birds which nest in the grass on the island. Sixty percent of Europe’s puffins are in Iceland. Sara explained that the terns can get very protective on the island where they nest and come in and dive bomb visitors. We would be given sticks to hold up while on the island so the birds would nip them instead of our heads. 😳

Tonight was French night in the Colonnade.
Joe started with 🐌
I had the foie gras terrine.
Chateaubriand for Joe.
I had the lobster tail and seafood risotto.
Crème brûlée for dessert

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July 4, Vigur Island

Happy 4th of July! Lunch was burritos, guacamole and margaritas. I suppose they felt Mexican food was somehow American. 🤨

As I previously mentioned, in the Arctic region the weather can change with a blink of an eye. 
This morning we experienced it… 

As an expedition trip we had to be flexible. The wind was blowing so hard at Vigur island that the zodiacs wouldn’t be safe to take us ashore. We’ve experienced these kinds of conditions and it’s not pleasant. So we missed our “experience” on Vigur Island.

As you’ll see from the photos below, it was incredibly nasty out there. We visited the bow lounge to check the ice flow charts and current weather conditions.