The Puffin and Volcano tour is very popular tour in the Westman Islands. You don’t have to fill a bus with your group size, you can just buy one ticket if you are the only one wanting to take a bus ride or maybe travelling alone in the islands. In this tour your guide Ebbi and his lovely wife Íris collect passengers to minimum 4 pax to make the tour.
The bus cross the island and you get a good knowledge of the life of the islanders and the history of the islands. Stopping at the most beautiful and popular places. In the tour you doesn't sit in the bus for too long as you are hopping in and out to explore the island up close. One of the biggest puffin colonies are visited and explored in its natural surroundings.
The tour starts at the pier, just a minute walk from the ferry and it’s easy to find our office. Íris, the owner, welcomes you with her kindness and you just feel welcomed. Ebbi, the guide, is a great one – you just assume he’s knowing everything about the island.
The first stop is Sprangan, our rope swinging training station. Rope swinging was important in earlier times when people descended into cliffs to collect seabird eggs from nests with just a single rope for their safety. Ebbi show you his skills in the cliffs and he is amazing.
Next is the valley (Herjólfsdalur), we stop there and in this tour we have an exclusive visit to replica of the first settlers man home. This is not an exact replica of the house, but it's fun to see what Viking houses looked like. The ruins of the real town are right next door. The valley has a lot of history and Ebbi has a lot to say in this stop.
Elephant rock is the most famous landmark in the Westman Islands and on this tour we see and admire this huge elephant that has formed in the rocks on this volcanic island.
Great Cape (Stórhöfði) is 122 meters / 400 feet high and we will drive all the way to it’s top. In the middle of the cape we will watch puffins in their puffin colony after only about 4 minutes of easy walk in the grassy hill.
We will drive over the new lava field that was created in the eruption in 1973. The eruption was unexpected, people left the island in just few hours and did not know what the future would be like. Houses went under lava in the next months and when people returned the island was black after the upheaval, today we can see moss and trees in this same lava. It's an amazing experience to go to the center of the crater and see how desolate the earth is, you almost feel like on another planet.
The tour is 1.5 - 2 hours with a great guide, English is spoken on the tour.
