Arctic terns on the small island

We take the ferry to reach the small island of Hrisey. The ferry runs every second hour so we sort of have to decide if we are trying to go back in two, four or six hours. We assume two hours will be too little to explore the island – and six hours will be a little much if we are going to reach hour destination for the night in time to have dinner. So the natural option is to skip a ferry and take the one leaving in four hours.

With four hours we have enough time to do the main trail around the southern part of the island. We walk a little bit along the one road of the village till we get to the end of the village. From here we turn into the island which is home to a lot of birds – especially during the breading season. We see a few birds on the water including some auks which are so common on Iceland.

We walk a bit away from the beach on up a hill into the inland of the island. Up here we see a few snipes and other birds living in the grass of the island. The most common bird seems to be the arctic tern which keeps flying above our heads. I am not sure if they are happy with us walking along the trail or if they think we are coming too close to their nesting area. Fortunately the terns only fly on top of us without suddenly diving down trying to chase us away.

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It was an enjoyable walk across the top of the island – and it seems like we have a lot of time to spend before the next ferry leaving the island. There aren’t a lot of things to do and explore in the village so we decide to search for a coffee shop or restaurants close to the ferry. We manage to find a place which is actually also a hotel. The hotel doesn’t have any guest – which is a bit odd considering it is high season and there is only a few places to spend the night on this tiny island. We realize the only marketing the hotel does is through flyers on the ferry to the island which doesn’t seem to be a viable way to go considering only a few people will probably feel comfortable going to a remote island without any prebooked accommodation.

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We do order cake at the restaurant and eat it while we enjoy the view of the harbor. We have plenty of time to eat the cake and then we make it down to the ferry. There aren’t a lot of people leaving the island in the afternoon – in fact we are the only passengers going with the ferry.