The Vestmannaeyjar day tour suits puffin people with a spare summer day
Who should take the 12-hour Westman Islands tour from Reykjavík, who should spend that day on the South Coast instead, and how to see puffins without the ferry.
Vestmannaeyjar, the Westman Islands, sit off the South Coast, a short ferry from Landeyjahöfn. Heimaey is the only inhabited one: a fishing town of about four thousand people wrapped around a harbour, with a volcano that erupted in 1973 still warm on the edge of it. In summer the cliffs fill with puffins. It’s one of the more distinctive days you can have from Reykjavík. It’s also one of the longest, and it isn’t for everyone.
What the day is
Arctic Adventures’ Vestmannaeyjar Day Tour runs in summer only, twelve hours from €234. Pickup in Reykjavík, about two hours down the coast to the ferry, the crossing, then a guided day on Heimaey. The island’s set pieces are close together: the Eldfell lava that buried a third of the town in 1973, the Eldheimar museum built around one of the excavated houses, the puffin cliffs at Stórhöfði, and a view across to Surtsey, the island that rose out of the sea in 1963. Then the ferry back and the drive home.
The good bits are genuinely good. The eruption story is one of the strangest in modern Europe: five thousand people evacuated overnight by fishing boat, a lava flow stopped from closing the harbour by pumping seawater onto it for months, half the town dug out of ash and rebuilt. You walk across it. And the puffins on Stórhöfði are close and numerous from around mid-April to August; you watch them come and go from the grass above the cliff.
The honest downsides
Twelve hours for a small island. Around four of them are coach, another hour and a half or so is ferry, and the crossing can be lumpy. Landeyjahöfn is a shallow harbour that silts up; when the swell is wrong the ferry is cancelled or rerouted, and the tour with it. You get a refund or a new date, but if it was your one spare day, it’s gone.
It’s also €234, more than most South Coast days, and you don’t see the South Coast on the way. You see the ferry road. If you haven’t done Seljalandsfoss and Reynisfjara yet, this tour won’t fix that.
And it’s summer only. From September the puffins are gone and the departures stop.
Who should skip it
If your trip is four nights or fewer, spend the day on the coast instead. BusTravel Iceland’s South Coast Small Group Tour, ten hours from €128, gives you the waterfalls, the glacier and the black beach, the things you came to Iceland for the first time to see. Vestmannaeyjar is a second-visit day, or a sixth-day day.
If it’s the puffins you want and not the island, you don’t need a ferry. Elding’s Reykjavík Classic Puffin Watching leaves the Old Harbour for the islands in the bay, one hour from €62, in summer. Fewer birds and further away than Stórhöfði, but it’s an hour, not a day.
Our honest take
Take the Vestmannaeyjar tour if you have six or more nights, you’ve already done the South Coast, it’s between May and August, and the story of a town that fought a volcano appeals to you as much as the birds. On those terms it’s one of the better days on our list.
Skip it if any of those aren’t true. The tradeoff is blunt: this is a twelve-hour, weather-dependent, €234 day for one island. For the right person that’s a bargain. For a first-time visitor with four days, it’s the wrong use of one of them.
