Wildlife and waterfalls — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

I wanted to visit the Hornstrandir Nature Preserve in extreme NW Iceland because Arctic foxes thrive there. It’s quite a challenge to get there, as there are only 2 ferries a day from Isafjordur - one in the morning to drop off hikers and campers, and one in the late afternoon to pick you up, if you’re only there for the day.

The ferry is the white boat, while the red Zodiac is what brought all 8 of us on the day hike to the beach. We had a pretty nice welcome -

…and I was thrilled to see a fox so quickly, until our guide said this fella patrols the beach and greets most groups.

As you can see, he isn’t too afraid…

We set off hiking through fields of wildflowers…

… and said goodbye to our buddy.

We basically just walked on up the hill, with no set path to walk on.

It felt kinda wrong to just walk over the moss, lichen, and plants that we’ve been conditioned to not tread on when hiking on set paths, so as not to destroy decades or even centuries of growth. The “cushiness” of the moss was awesome -

Even though there was a fair amount of snow still on the ground…

… the ambient temp wasn’t that uncomfortable for us. The walk was occasionally challenging, to navigate over or around streams that would just pop up across our general direction of travel -

We didn’t have a set point to reach, so once we got to this little lake with its resident swan pair (you’ll definitely need to enlarge the picture to see them)…

… we turned back around (as the lowering clouds weren’t very welcoming) to end up near the beach, and Steve and I spent some of our waiting time “flower bathing” (i.e. napping) in this field -

The next day, moving on down the Westfjords, we passed mountainsides of lupine…

… and rare beaches of golden sand…

… until we reached Dynjandi.

This is actually a collection of seven named waterfalls…

… that were each…

… quite beautiful in their own way (don’t worry, I won’t belabor the point with pictures of all 7).

The largest, at the top, was quite impressive:

see the woman at the bottom right corner for scale

Steve wanted me to include this clip of Arctic Terns dive-bombing me as I returned from some bird watching, which you’ll need to watch from your browser. (Yes, I’m wearing a “midge net” over my hat to keep the buggers out of my nose and ears.)

On the south side of the Westfjords are some interesting sights - Raudasandur (Red sand beach) -