Our ship was a time-capsule back to pre-tourism Iceland |
It turns out that expedition cruising is a great way to sidestep the crowds at popular waterfalls, volcanoes and glaciers.
Here's an excerpt, and you can read the full story here: How to see Iceland without the crowds.
Iceland cometh
It's an overcast morning when our ship, the National Geographic Explorer, drops anchor in a quiet fjord in northwest Iceland. Those of us at the breakfast buffet peer out the windows at a world of stillness.
One of the 10 milion North Atlantic puffins in Iceland |
This is no follow-the-leader paddle. Instead we pair up, lower ourselves into two-person kayaks and push off into the view, free to go where we like.
At first my paddling partner and I drift, wowed my our surroundings: a U-shaped glacial valley, green walls curving upwards from sea level into a ceiling of low cloud, a speck of a farmhouse on the far shore. Behind us is the Greenland Sea, the water polished steel.
Then, movement: a North Atlantic puffin, a few silvery sand eels clamped in its harlequin beak, takes flight, red feet running on water, until, in a frenzy of flapping, it's airborne.
Watching it fly off into the empty landscape, I start to wonder: where are all the other tourists?
Read on...
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