Day 124-puffins

   May 7-The discussion time in Sally's class is being used this week for groups of students to give presentations about a developing country of their choice.  Sally was quite pleased with the first couple of groups who gave their presentations today.  Hopefully, the other groups will do fine jobs as well.  The more Sally teaches the development economics course, the more she finds that Iceland is similar to developing countries, with a single, large metropolitan area, a "resource curse," financial instability, and crony capitalism.  Obviously, the standard of living here is much better than in many developing countries, though.  This and other differences put Iceland somewhere in the middle of the continuum between developing and developed countries.
   Meanwhile, I continued to play tour guide for Alison.  With the Golden Circle out of the way, Alison's sights next turned to the West Fjords.  This is the peninsula that Alex describes as a claw extending northwest out of Iceland.  After we took Spencer to Hraunborg, Alison and I headed off.  As the name suggests, the geography of the West Fjords is dominated by its fjords, which makes overland travel difficult.  Until the mid-20th century, much of the West Fjords was not accessible by car.  Since then, roads have been built and now connect all of the towns in the region.  Most of them have two lanes and some are even paved.  Nonetheless, it is still time-consuming to get anywhere, because roads must either take very circuitous routes around the fjords or climb steeply over the tall mountains that separate the heads of each of the fjords.  Consequently, it took us three hours to drive between two points that are less than 100 miles apart as the crow flies.

This is claimed to be the oldest steel ship in Iceland.

   We drove along the southern coast of the West Fjords and then cut over to the town of Patreksfjörður to find some dinner.  None of the restaurants were open, so we made sandwiches and ate them on a sandy beach with a trawler that was beached there 30 years ago.  We made a short detour to visit the Rauðasandur beach and then continued on to Hotel Breiðavík, which is the westernmost hotel in Iceland.  The wife of the international coordinator at Bifröst knows Birna, the owner of Hotel Breiðavík, and had suggested that we at least stop in for coffee.  Since the hotel opened May 1 and the rates were good for sleeping bag accommodations, we decided to spend the night there as well. 

Hotel Breiðavík

   This turned out to be a very good choice, because Birna gave us the inside scoop on the best time to visit the Látrabjarg cliffs to see puffins.  We followed her advice and decided to have an early supper so we could visit the cliffs in the early evening.  While we waited for the staff to prepare the supper, we explored the beaches at the hotel.  Alison collects shells and found some nice brown specimens that were new to her.  I puzzled over some oddly shaped flotsam at a couple places before I figured out that they were pieces of sponges.  Then, I noticed that they were washed up on the beach all over the place.  I collected a few pieces to bring home for the kids (and to use when washing dishes).
   The hotel served us their standard three course meal: asparagus soup, pork chops, and a delicious dessert made from sour milk, pudding, and blackberries.  Sated, we made the ten minute drive to the Látrabjarg cliffs, which is touted as the westernmost point of Europe.  Disclaimer: NOT counting the Azores.  Also, does it count as Europe if it is on the North American tectonic plate?  Well, in any event, it is certainly the westernmost point of Iceland.

This is the first sign to greet visitors to Látrabjarg.
Is it a warning or an invitation?

   The cliffs were truly spectacular.  They drop straight to the ocean and are over 1000 feet tall in some locations.  We quickly ran across puffins on the cliffs next to the parking lot.  I have seen videos and pictures of people within arms' reach of them and figured that this was some faked situation.  That may be the case, but the puffins we saw did not seem particularly perturbed by our presence and we got within a few feet without scaring them off.  Alison was ecstatic about getting to see them.  I was also very pleased at our good fortune to find them when we did, because these few were the only ones we saw.  We hiked further up the cliffs and saw lots of sea gulls and some pretty views of Snæfellsjökull.  We returned to the parking lot just as a number of other tourists showed up, but the puffins we had seen earlier were gone.

Alison demonstrates the proper method of getting close to the unstable cliff edge to view puffins.

View of the rugged landscape to the northeast of the westernmost point of Iceland.

   On the drive back to the hotel, we saw a couple of people with a rifle coming down towards their SUV on the road.  A short distance further down the road we came over a rise and saw an Arctic fox in the middle of the road.  It was midway through changing from its winter to its summer coat.  The result was a salt-and-pepper look.  It scurried on down the hillside before we could get a picture of it.  The SUV stopped a little further down the road and that was when I realized that they were probably hunting the fox, since there are essentially no other large game animals in western Iceland.  The SUV pulled into the hotel in front of us and turned out to belong to people who worked at the hotel.  While I was drinking an Irish coffee in the lobby a little later on, I got the chance to talk to the employees and asked about their fox-hunting.  Since most tourists are urbanites and are unlikely to understand their situation, the locals tend not to be too open or conversant about their fox-hunting.  Luckily, they were willing to talk to me about it for a short while.  It essentially sounds like Arctic foxes are the Icelandic equivalent of the coyote in Colorado.  They are not particularly popular with the hospitality industry or the ranchers, because they hunt birds and sheep, so they are fair game in most rural locations.