Dyrhólaey

There is a peninsula with a natural arch on the southern coast of Iceland called Dyrhólaey. The name translates as door (dyr) hole (hóla) island (ey). (I read that it used to be an island.) Dyrhólaey is a popular spot to visit and take pictures. If you look at the photo below closely, you can see the tiny sightseers on top.

Looking in the other direction, a long, black sand beach stretches out to the horizon. For scale, note the white jeep slightly right of the center of the photo. (This shot was taken about 11 months earlier than the others, hence the different colors in the sky and water.) Also note the lack of sunbathers and swimmers --- it's chilly out there!

Here is the view from the top of the arch itself, looking back at the point where we stood to take the photo above:

The arch itself is quite nice to look at, but in the summer, a special bonus is the presence of nesting puffins. Apparently they are not bothered by the proximity of humans.

They are as ridiculously cute in person as we had seen in pictures.

Berry-picking at Heiðmörk

We had great (sunny) weather on Sunday, and we decided to do something typically Icelandic -- pick wild blueberries. Late August to early September is the prime season for it.

Just on the outskirts of town is a public recreation area called Heiðmörk where people can pick as many berries as they want for free. We picked blueberries and red currants, but there are also crowberries and black currants. Here's one of our three containers of berries.

This little birdie, a meadow pipit, aka anthus pratensis, followed us around for a while. He was not at all shy and came up close to us, sticking by us as we picked berries, catching up to us as we moved along. Weird.

Birds of South Africa

South Africa is great for wildlife viewing. Many have heard about the opportunities to see the "big five" (lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino), but the country is also rich with bird life. Here's a few we saw on our trip.

We saw this hoopoe while eating lunch in Kruger National Park. He was not skittish and didn't mind having his photo taken.



We tried to get closer to this white-fronted bee eater but he flew away, so this is a blow up of the photo taken before his escape. (Yes, we used a zoom lens, but we don't have one of those 6-foot-long mega lenses that allow you to see a gnat on the bird's beak.)



This cape weaver and his friend are perched in a tree outside of our chalet (a house, really) at Hlalanathi in the Northern Drakensberg range. The chalet looked out on "the amphitheater," a section of the mountains often pictured on postcards. A photo of the amphitheater is in our first post on this blog.



We spotted this spoonbill on the other side of the country at West Coast National Park.



There's a penguin colony at Boulder's Beach, near the Cape of Good Hope. You can get close to the penguins, but there were far fewer here than in the reserve we visited in Argentina, Reserva Provincial Punta Tombo.



Aerial view of a penguin.



There are lots of ostriches in South Africa. Some live wild in the parks and reserves, like those pictured here. Others are raised on farms for their meat.



These two ostriches appear to be in love. Or something.