We arrived at Heimay Island about 9:30 AM, coming through amazing rocks into the harbor.
John and Tammy and I went for a walk. (Steve wasn’t interested in braving the rain.) I wore the rain coat I bought at REI in Gatlinberg over my new Iceland sweater and stayed quite warm and dry. We steered right out of the port toward one of the cliffs, over a hump to the other side of a peninsula. John had the forethought to download a detailed map of Iceland from his GPS while we were at the hotel with free Internet. Tammy and I looked longingly at a steep path up the mountain, but we had left our poles in our rooms. We found a contour path that eventually petered out under a rocky overhang. Beautiful cliffs even in the rain.
Our afternoon tour took us back to the same area along the road to this spot where the annual festival happens. This is a replica of a dwelling from about AD 1000 whose ruins were excavated on the other side of the road.
Next stop: a puffin rookery.
With a few sheep running around the hillside.
As we returned to the bus, a car horn sounded and the sheep went running for the gate: the owner arriving with treats.
The museum of the 1973 volcanic eruption on the island was most impressive. The entire population of 5000 had to be evacuated to the mainland. The museum is built around a house in situ that was excavated after 40 years. You can still see clothing and broken glass in the rooms along with piles of black tuft that filled it.
Our tour guide was the assistant principal of the elementary school who grew up here and returned to raise his family after a few years on the mainland and a couple in Denmark. He told us about needing to rescue the pufflings that wandered into town, drawn apparently by the lights. If they weren’t released into the ocean they would drown in the polluted harbor or die in holes among the buildings with nothing to eat. It becomes a game for a few weeks for families to go around town searching and catching the baby puffins and releasing them. He also told us that his mother-in-law has too many horrific memories of the night the volcano erupted to listen to the audio-tour of the museum.
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