Day 19–Ferry ride and Northern Lights

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Today we leave the West Fjords and head south on the car ferry Ferjan Baldur. It’s a 3 hour boat ride and we had internet connectivity the whole way. I still got a little bored and had a nice nap on the way.

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Looking at the forecast for tomorrow it was going to be overcast so we decided to take advantage of the sun and see the sights this afternoon.

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We decided to make it a loop as we have all afternoon.

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First planned stop was Búðakirkja a little black church.

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This one was built around 1703. There are what seems to be a large number of churches in Iceland and they seem to be from a similar template. There’s something about the couple of little black ones that really stands out or maybe I just like black and white.

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Of course we had to see another waterfall – Kirkjufellsfoss.

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This one had the fullest (yet small) parking lot we’d seen with people parked awkwardly on the side of the road. We luckily arrived at a car turnover and managed to get a safe spot.

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What makes this one worth stopping for is you can get Kirkjufell Mountain in the same photo is you take a panorama.

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Or you have a wide enough lense and can get a good angle on it. Here I was approached by some men (you can just see them in the pic) to help them with their photo mission. One was dressed like a caveman and wanted to get a pic of him with the mountain…sure … not sure why his buddy couldn’t take the photo. Once agreeing to assist his mate then quickly disrobed and put on a gag. Hmm…ok. So about 10 photos and high five’s later they seemed happy. Not sure how they’ll look as it was just on a phone and the difference in light was difficult but they seemed happy.

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I’d been refreshing the aurora forecast a lot. It had been forecast to be cloudly and activity of 1-2 but stubborn as I am I just kept refreshing. As the afternoon drew on it was going to be clear with a 3. By night it was a 4.

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There wasn’t much around on our scout worth driving out to so we opted to stay up till midnight and just walk up the hill behind town to the lighhouse.

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As we tried to find shelter from the town lights which totally wipe out your ability to see the green wisp across the sky we started to see colour changes.

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It’s very subtle as it’s early in the season but it looks like a thin cloud. The cloud will glow slightly. You actually see the colour come out better on the photo and I wonder if people don’t even realise they are seeing the lights.