Iceland Pt 3

We had a very long and scenic drive from Hofn up to Seydisfjordur past the Eastern Fjords of Iceland. Quite a spectacle. The scale of the landscape can't be conveyed by photos, but I've tried to show it below. A slightly frustrating thing about driving in Iceland is that every road is on an elevated bund, so there is never anywhere to pull up - other than the designated stops. They do a good job and there are enough of those - but it's quite odd with the road sharply dropping away at the edge of the bitumen - on all the roads so far in Iceland! We've now left glaciers behind and have been mostly on massive coastlines and fjords (with multiple waterfalls running down them). We've made it today to the town of Borgarfjardarhofn, which has a little promontory called Hafnarholmi where there are puffins - and boy are there puffins! They are the reason we've come here.  Here are some pics.....

Scenery past Stokksnes, where we had nice coffee and cake but did not visit the Viking Village left by a film crew in 2009....

Waterfall off side of road nearby....

Note Marian behind waterfall...

General scenery in this part of iceland: huge mountains with scree slopes running down to black beaches or cliffs - with the Ring Road (Highway No. 1) between ....

Little municipal bird hide at head of one of the several fjords we drove around...

After a 6.3km tunnel, we headed up and over some mountains (not that high - only to 600m elevation) and back down, to the village of Seydisfjordur on its fjord. The character of the drive changed dramatically going over the mountains (1 degree)! The high country has a ski resort that (because it operates in winter) has to be used most of the time under lights!...

Seydisfjordur is very pretty with brightly coloured houses and little craft shops. Being on a fjord, it has a lot of maritime focussed business and is a port for ferries running to Denmark and the Faroe Islands twice a week...

This morning we headed up further north-east to Borgarfjardarhofn where we are now. The lady at reception told us to go to the puffin promotory after 9 - 10pm to see 'many puffins'. But we went for a reconnoiter at 5pm and still saw a lot - they were right up next to the steps and timber landings provided for viewing. We'll go again after dinner tonight at the time she suggested (they will all be coming in from the day feeding off-shore). I got some good shots using 'portrait' mode on the iPhone (where you can blur the background), because they were only about 1 to 2m away from me!...