27 July: A day trip to West Iceland. Our minibus leaves Reykjavík at 8AM, with 15+ of us on board. With a quick stopover in Borganes ("for technical stuff" - that's what our driver-cum-guide calls pit stops!), we arrive in Stykkishólmur around 10:30, for our boat cruise on Breiðafjörður, to watch some birdlife and eat some seafood.

Stykkishólmur is situated on þórnes headland. Helgafell, a nearby low mountain, has been called the "Holy Mountain" over the centuries. The guy who first settled in this area thought it was so holy that one must not look at it without washing himself first. Someone else took it even further and allowed no toilet to be built on the headland. So the residents had to wait for the low tide in order to go to the toilet on a little island off the coast. If you missed it, you'd have to wait for 6 hours for the next chance! But then some people had problem with this, and so there was a war - "War of the Toilet" (so our driver calls it; he's very funny in a dry, Icelandic way) - and after that, you could build toilets on land. Phew.

Our boat, SAERUN.

Rocks in the in the middle of the sea.

Breiðafjörður is scattered with little islands.

First we visit an island where puffins live.

Then a one nearby, inhabited by hundreds of kittiwakes. (We'll see tonnes more of them later in the day, so here's only a photo of a baby bird.)

A couple of eagles.

The papparazzi.

The cormorants are hard to see, as they are black and like hanging out on dark-coloured rocks. Look for them at the bottom of the image.

A bit closer up.
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