Icelandic Road Trip – Seal watching and visiting the Arctic Fox center

· by · in Europe, Road-trip, Westfjords. ·

We took road 633, then 61, and after half an hour of going in and out around the fjords, we stopped briefly in Litlibaer, a little historic farm house that was built in 1895. There was a sign outside explaining the history of the place. It was possible to buy coffee and home-made jam. I regret not to have bought some blue berries jam :-(

“Litlibaer was built in 1895. The hayfield around the house is enclosed by stone wall and has an area of 3 hectares. The residents lived of fishing and farming. The house at Litlibaer has an area of only 3.9 X 7.4 meters. There were two kitchen outhouses nearby. As many as 20 people lived in the house at times, and it was occupied until 1969. Just south of the stone wall are the ruins of circular stone-built shelter, which is considered much older than other stone construction at Litlibaer.”

A few hundreds meters away, we stopped at Hvítanes, with the hope to spot some seals sunbathing on the rocks. We did some seal watching previously, but it was a lot more windy and rainy than here :-) The seals didn’t mind our presence, but we stay rather far away in order to not disturb them.

We passed in front of the The Arctic Fox Center, where the brother of our little fox was taken, located in an old farm in the fishing village of Súðavík, 1 hour from Hvitanes. We visited the museum and learned a lot of the Arctic foxes, that was really interesting ! We learned that Arctic foxes live in various habitats and climates, from freezing Canadian tundra to the relatively mild Iceland.

In Sudavik, we had lunch at Amma Habbýn, an American diner. It looked a bit old, but it was good and cheap.

Ísafjörður was our final destination of the day. Fishing has been the main industry in Ísafjörður, and the town has one of the largest fisheries in Iceland. We walked a bit in the town, take the car to go to a viewpoint, but all in all there wasn’t so much to do over there. We took this opportunity to do our laundry in a camping nearby :-)

My Travel Monkey
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46 responses to “Icelandic Road Trip – Seal watching and visiting the Arctic Fox center”

  1. Honestly Gin, I cannot tell you how stunning your photos are – the natural beauty is just breathtaking and the more i see the more I want to do an Icelandic road trip. You’d be the best person to come to when i do! Thanks for sharing on #MondayEscapes

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    • If you have the chance, I would encourage you to do so. Iceland is one of my best memories, I love this place so much ! It is incredible and amazing to see this raw nature, will all the contrast. It’s a bit expensive, but it’s worth it. And the arctic foxes are just so cute !

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  9. Pingback: Icelandic Road Trip – Oops, my mistake …. | Darwin on the rocks and around the world·

  17. More stunning photos Gin I’m enjoying my regular treat of reading about Iceland! I love the way you do short snippets of information at a time – you can imagine being there thanks so much for sharing your experiences! :)

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    • I’m really glad you are enjoying this virtual trip. I’m trying to give some information to help people if they want to plan a trip over there. Before going there, I read a lot of blogs about Iceland, and I’ve found a lot of useful information and it really helped me :-)

      Have a nice week !

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      • Yes it’s a great idea Gin- it’s so good to share information like this as you get more of a feel for the places than by just reading guide books! Hope you’ve had a good week too :)

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          • We do celebrate it in Australia and “trick or treating” has become very popular here! In fact I’ve spent the evening looking after the pets – our poor dog was very agitated when the trick or treaters kept coming to the door! We don’t do anything particular in our family for it though we used to do more when our girls were younger (it’s actually my elder daughter’s birthday today she was born on Halloween!). How about you do you celebrate it? Hope you have a relaxing weekend :)

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            • Oh no, the poor dog ! It must have been disturbing for him to see so many (scary) people at the door, I can imagine.

              It must be nice to be born around Halloween, I can imagine great birthday parties :-)

              We don’t really celebrate it here, but in some villages, children come for trick or treat if you place a pumpkin at your door. It means you don’t mind being disturbed and also that you have sweets for them.

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