Whale Watching - Reykjavik Iceland
Is whale watching something that’s been on your bucket list for a while? Whether you’re staying in Reykjavik or going through town like Husavik (the whale watching capital of Europe) there is an abundance of opportunity to see these giant creatures.
April to October is the ideal period for spotting them, and humpback, and orca are most common, with rare sighting of blue whales, sperms whales and narwhals. If you visit during summer there’s also the chance of spotting dolphins and puffins.
My experience was based out of Reykjavik at the beginning of October with Special Tours so this review is in regard to that.
Location
Special Tours is situated in Reykjavik City just on the outskirts of the main shopping areas. It’s within walking distance to most hotels, for my stay at the Nordic Hostel it was a 25 minute walk.
You can also book with pick up included, however this does increase the price a fair bit so if you’re within 30 minutes I’d recommend walking – to save some money and to get a bit of fresh air!
The Tour
There are either 9am or 1pm departures offered – my tour was the 9am one. These tours can be cancelled due to bad weather, which did happen to me on my first day, however it was thankfully rescheduled to later in the week when the conditions were more favourable.
The tour takes roughly 3 hours, an hour spent each way getting out to their spot at sea, and an hour floating around finding or following the whales.
We were lucky enough to spot maybe 3 humpback on our trip, with 2 of them gliding through the water together. We never saw much more than the whales floating on the surface or their backs when they sprayed from their blowhole – but we did get an incredible moment where one of the whales took a very large dive so we had the perfect view of it’s tail.
I’ve been on 3 whale watching tours now, and this one did make me wonder if they had any safety regulations in terms of safe distances for boats. There were a few occurrences where I felt we were much to close to the whales with the engines still running. Though it was incredible to see them so close since I never had before – I was concerned for the whales wellbeing with 3 large boats moving around by them.
At one point we were very lucky that the 2 whales came up directly beside the boat. Now this was unexpected as we didn’t know where they would pop up since they’d been underwater for a while, and made for a stunning close up experience.
My Thoughts
On my previous tours I had never seen whales quite so big, so that scores points there – but overall I’d probably rate it my second top whale watching experience. In saying that I don’t think any whale watching tour will ever beat what I saw in Alaska!
I think if I were back in Iceland again I’d like to try in Husavik to possibly increase the chances of seeing more activity.
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