An absolutely perfect trip!

Today was absolutely incredible!

We sailed from Grindavík again and once again the tour was magnificent!
We saw 4 Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) and 3 Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). And the experience was just insane!

One of the humpbacks did a full body breach out of the water! I didn't get a shot of it but it was still an utterly exhilarating thing to see! And all of the orca and humpbacks were swimming underneath and around our boat, coming within a metre of the boat and being perfectly calm around us. Even the sea seemed to sense the perfect occasion and was glassy still throughout the tour.

I can't really describe how excellent the tour was, we spotted the first whale after 30 minutes and had constant, incredible contact for the next 2 hours. And it never got old, by the end I had butterflies in my stomach that just wouldn't fade!

Even the very start of the tour gave us some heavenly sunlight forcing its way through the clouds.

The tour gave us four juvenile male orcas. You can tell they're male by their very large, straight dorsal fins.

An orca and humpback whale together, we're pretty sure they were feeding together. The fish were quite deep and all the animals were diving together and surfacing together.

Cracking Northern Gannet picture! Largest sea bird in the North-Atlantic!

Killer whales tend to spend all their time together, they usually travel together in family pods. So it was a little unusual to see a small group without the entire family.

Love getting a good shot of an eye-spot.

The humpbacks came lips first! Silly whale, it isn't Valentines Day yet!

Cracking wings!

Basically sitting right at the surface, perfect view!

Double orca!

Love the look of the sun bouncing off the back of the orca

I ran to the bottom deck to a lovely vertical shot of the orcas surfacing!

Now this is a special picture! This is one of my best, hands down.

The little splash of water looks quite cute to me

And lastly the killer whales swam off into the sunset, they know how to end a tour...

If January continues in this vein then this blog should certainly get a lot more activity!

Thanks for reading!

After a whale absence, an old friend returned.

It has been a while since we've seen anything at all in the bay, and in that time there's been some significant changes.
I now work as a guide for Elding! This can mean only good things! It means I'll be out on the water a lot more and I'll also be staying until June! So instead of this blog ending in March it will now run until the Summer! Yaay!

And now today! The story actually starts yesterday, I had a day off so I chose to have a lazy day. The boat went on a tour to Grindavík. This is on the south coast and is known for being a Humpback hotspot but is susceptible to bad weather so we can only go on very good days. Well the tour came back with news of 6 humpies, 10 dolphins and around 30 orca... I was very angry with myself. So today I decided to use my other day off to go back on the boat!

We saw orca! Around 10-12 with adults and calves!

A big male comes bursting through the swell!

Followed by his friend, bromance followed!

A little family group, father mother and child all together!

A beautiful shot of an orca swimming near Elding

An orca calf does it's own version of the big male bursting through the swell.

Peek-a-boo. Orca style.

It looks like we'll be sailing from that port for the next few days so the chances of more orca are very good!

Thanks for reading!

Back in Iceland!

Yay I'm back in Iceland after a nice Christmas break back in rainy England.

Unfortunately the weather has been pretty terrible so far and so there has been no boat trips for me so far, but I've been finally taking advantage of the free trip perks this job offers me!
So I've been to the blue lagoon again, the first time there was Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (Cast members from A Game of Thrones) and this time Charlie Sheen made an appearance! Celebs abound in the lagoon! Obviously I hadn't taken my camera into the water so my only proof is that it was in the Reykjavik Grapevine!

But today for the third time I did the Golden Circle tour! This consists of Gullfoss (The Golden Waterfall), Þingvellir national park and Geysir (The original geyser) along with an extra stop to a geothermal power plant that was very nice!

So now I've done the Golden Circle in summer, autumn and winter! If I really feel like it I may make a montage of the seasons, especially if I go again in Spring! But hey, right now I'll just throw down my highlights of this seasons Golden Circle trip!

Gullfoss looking lovely all covered in snow and ice!

Very odd to see the waterfall practically deserted by tourists, Winter is a serene time!

Is it me or does this raven look utterly depressed? No-one even tries to understand a raven...

Þingvellir with a glorious sunset.

I really like this, the magnificence of both the geyser Strokkur and the sunset combine well

Hopefully the beginning of 2014 will have more to report than the end of 2013!

Thanks for reading!