There’s an inherent conflict in seeing puffins, in Iceland or anywhere else. On the one hand, tourists want to get as close as possible to these adorable and photogenic birds. It’s one thing to see puffins from a boat, where you may be 50 feet from their burrows. (And this is still wonderful to see!) But it’s entirely another thing to see them standing just in front of you, 10 or 15 feet away. You can count how many fish they have in their mouths, ready to feed to their baby puffling. (That’s what a puffin baby is called.)
On the other hand, the puffins don’t really want you to be that close. Puffins meet the same mate back on shore year after year, and the couple returns to the same burrow year after year to raise their baby. Get too close, and that puffin with a mouthful of fish might be too afraid to enter its burrow. Too afraid to feed its baby.
This is becoming a real problem in certain parts of the world; a famous puffin nesting area has been closed off to visitors on the Faroe Islands. And back in Iceland, popular bird watching spots also have restrictions.
One solution seems to be setting up a system that limits the number of visitors to a puffin nesting site. Ingólfshöfði is a great example of this. We’re on the south coast of Iceland, just a few minutes west of Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon. Thousands of tourists are in this area every day, but very few of them will be able to get to Ingólfshöfði. The only way to get here is by booking a tour and heading out on a tractor-pulled haycart through a sometimes muddy beach.
That sounds like a joke, but it’s exactly what the process is! You’ll park your car and board this cart:
This cart will be your home for the next half hour as you head toward the cape. The first bit of the drive is the most exciting, at least during our summer 2019 trip. The water was deep enough to nearly cover the tires on the cart. But this lasted just a handful of seconds, and the rest of the drive was … well, if not relaxing, at least uneventful. Here’s our destination:
(I cheated a little on that picture; this is on our way back to the parking lot, so you can see the tractor tire marks we just made.)
You disembark at the base of the cape, and your first task is to trudge up a black sand hill. We slipped and slid a little bit, and the kids complained that it was a difficult trek. But 2 minutes of exertion was all it took to reach the top.
But look how far we’ve come! This gives a nice sense of the path the tractor took to get us here:
Once at the top, our tour guide was our shepherd for the next 90 or so minutes. We casually followed him to 2 or 3 resting spots, where we stood and watched for puffins and the occasional other bird. Our first sighting was actually a skua. Skuas are big bird bullies, though this one just watched our group of 30 or so trudge past. Strength in numbers.
Then we got to the puffins. Most birds have hollow bones, which makes them lighter, which makes flying easier. Puffins have solid bones, which gives them more weight to dive for fish. But it makes flying hard, and they often have awkward and hilarious takeoffs and landings.
I started this post by talking about how we want to see puffins up close, but the puffins don’t really buy into this logic. And so the tour had a little bit of an unfortunate dynamic, in that hanging out away from the main group often led to closer puffin encounters:
Note that most of the group is ahead of me in the picture above. The guide allowed this, though you don’t want to get too far away from the group. Also, if you’re by yourself, that skua might come after you, as this one came after me:
Lesson learned.
The guide didn’t say much, other than to keep us on schedule. He did set up a telescope at a couple of locations, with the wordless understanding that you could take a look through it at a bird in the distance. I do wish that he had explained more as we walked, but it was also nice to just be able to focus on watching the birds and taking pictures.
If you’re lucky, you’ll get really close to a puffin. If not, you’ll still get close enough to see their colorful beaks and that they have fish in their mouths. It’s a beautiful place with tons of puffins.
We walked in a big loop until we got back to the hill we had climbed. I like that we walked on a loop, and so we didn’t need to backtrack. Head back down the hill, climb on the cart, and spend 30 minutes heading back. Some people brought food or snacks, and eating these on the ride back seemed to be the most common approach. One family brought a thermos of hot soup, which seemed like a great idea– you’re outside for 2 1/2 hours, and the wind can be chilling!
The tour is run by a company called From Coast to Mountains. The adult price isn’t cheap at 9250 ISK ($74 US, or €67), though it’s comparable in price to a whale watching trip. (And with a total time of 2 1/2 hours, it also takes almost as long.) The price for children is where this works out well: Kids 8-16 cost just 2750 ISK ($22 US or €20), and kids 5-7 are free. Check the web site for extremely detailed information about kids under 5. In short, younger kids are allowed, but you shouldn’t pre-book in case the weather is bad. Make sure everyone dresses warmly– you don’t want cold and miserable kids (or adults!) with you.
Update 2022: The language about small children may not be on their website any more. Here’s what it used to say: “Of course children younger than 4 year old are welcome on the tour, but we don’t recommend to book online with very young children, in case that the weather is challenging at the time of departure. We do sell the remaining tickets from 1 hour before depature at the Ingólfshöfði Check in Hut. You could also check the weather forecast or even call us couple of days ahead of the tour, and then book with infants if the weather looks fine.”
Ingólfshöfði gets you close to puffins, and in a sustainable way. I wish the guide had educated us more on birds in Iceland, but that didn’t detract much from the tour. If you’re up for spending an hour in a cart, you’ll get a semi-private trip to a place with a ton of puffins.
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