Questions regarding Vestmannaeyjar visit

Yes, 8:45 is too late in the morning. You will see them but they will be flying around fishing vs being near their nests.

Definitely take your vehicle over. The puffin area is at the opposite end of the island, but also if the ferry encounters bad weather they detour to a port 3 hours away. You would be stuck with no way to get to your vehicle.

I highly recommend staying overnight. You can do all of that except the puffins in that time frame. The puffins there though are seem early in the morning and late at night. Do not miss Eldheimar museum!

Thank you so much! I will give staying overnight some thought and see if that works with the rest of my itinerary.

Mei

Happy to help:) Even if you can take the first ferry back the next morning, that would allow you to look for puffins in the evening as well as the morning before the ferry leaves.

Just came back from Iceland a week ago. I want to thank you for the advice you gave about staying one night on Westman island. I ended up making changes to my plan to arrive on the island on the 9 pm ferry and stay overnight. We went to the puffin lookout the following day at 7 am, in time to see a full arc of beautiful rainbow (it was raining on and off all day the previous day and night) as we walked up to the puffin lookout structure and see thousands of puffins on the slope right in front of us, the closest about 15-20 meters away!

For the day on the island, we also did the volcano museum (with the audio guide), hiked up to the top of the volcano for a spectacular view, and an one-hour ribsafari boat tour. I loved all of the activities on the island, and the day was definitely one of the highlights for our trip. Thanks again for your advice!

Mei

Mei--I am so glad you had a great time! Yes that early morning time is amazing with the puffins. Were there any other people there with you? We had it to ourselves, which surprised me.

The puffins have left east Iceland though a few may be around in Skalanes. How does one know if they are still on Westman Island? Is there a webcam?

There were two other groups of people (6 altogether) at the puffin lookout when we were there, so pretty quiet. I was surprised that there were not more people there, but also happy that we got the place almost all to ourselves.