Höfn to Egilsstaðir

After a good nights' sleep at the Fosshotel just outside of Hofn, we headed towards the East Fjords, not quite sure how far into the Fjords we would get.  Of course, Paula, being the activity coordinator, forgot to mention her plan to stop in Djupivogur and take a boat out to Papey Island.  Luckily, we arrived just in time for the boat trip which turned out to be a highlight of our time in Iceland!  This was a 4 hour tour out to an Island that was inhabited until 1948, with a maximum of 16 residents at any time.  It is now a puffin sanctuary and our tour guide was very gave us the history of the family who lived there.  The family was from Gimli, Manitoba and they lived there quite isolated from the rest of the world.  We walked around the island for 2 hours finding puffins, eider, guillemots, arctic tern, razobills and I'm sure other birds whose names I can't remember.

These are puffin holes:

It was 5pm by the time we finished this tour so we decided we had to skip the East Fjords and take the shortcut: road 939.  The local at the gift shop assured us it's much faster to take this road rather than the ring road.  Route 939 is a very narrow gravel road that winds through a mountain range.

Coming in the opposite direction we passed hundreds of cyclists competing in the WOW Cyclothon, a 24 hour cycle race around the island.

http://www.wowcyclothon.is/en/