Iceland: Day 6 - Látrabjarg

June 30, 2004

At Látrabjarg is the Europe's most western point reachable by car and one of the world's greatest bird cliffs. Besides puffins, it also is home to the largest colony of razorbills as well as numerous cormorants, fulmars, guillemots and kittiwakes. Having spent almost a day getting here, we found 2 dirt roads marked on the map to get to the actual cliffs. Unfortunately our first pick was the wrong one - as the rocks were hitting the bottom of our car we thought of the rental insurance policy that did not provide coverage for driving on 'tracks'. For about half an hour we persevered with white knuckles, desperately trying to get to the puffins. We finally had to give up when we got to the top of a hill and realized that if we went down it, we'd never get back up. Completely dejected we almost gave up altogether, but the second road was much better. At 10 pm we got to the Látrabjarg lighthouse and judging by the dozen vans in the parking lot and all the photographers running along the cliff, we figured there was something to see here. We got out, walked to the edge of the cliff, and not 2 feet away from us was a puffin! Not just one puffin, thousands of puffins! :)

Did someone say this was supposed to be a road?

Heading back down the track of disappointment.

 
A puffin egg.

Rubby enjoying the view from the cliffs.

You'd never guess that Rubby had been feeling sick all day!

The 441 m high cliffs are home to millions of sea birds.

The photographers were part of a tour taking pictures of Iceland.
Rubby was starting to get camera lens envy!

The puffins live in burrows along the cliff tops while other birds make their nests further down.

Besides puffins we also saw some seals playing among the rocks in the sunset.

[ Iceland Vacation Home Page ]