Norway 2018 – first part

Earlier this year during the Boot-trade show I decided to go back to Norway with the whales. This time it was not in Andenes but in a little village north east of Tromsoe. What I hadn’t known that travelling there would be such an adventure… 😉 😀 Let’s keep the trip there short version… all looked mostly well but I hadn’t been too comfortable with just 35 minutes between flights in Tromsoe. In Oslo it looked like we were on time as they were already doing the pre-boarding calls – only 5 minutes before our scheduled departure time there was an announcement that we had to switch planes. That was when I met part of my group… 😉 Since we all had the same problem we met somehow at the counter. We finally departed with 45 minutes delay and before landing we were told that we go to the other gate as fast as possible as the other flight crew had not confirmed that they would wait. Before arriving at the gate we got the news though that they would wait. We ran anyway and of course the gate was at the other side of the airport… we boarded and when everyone was there we started towards Sorkjosen… little did we know that we would be back in Tromsoe after one hour. During the flight we were aware that there was a lot of wind and the flight became bumpy. I was deep in thought and didn’t realize that we should have had landed already when the captain announced that we could not land in Sorkjosen due to the storm. So we flew back to Tromsoe. Once arrived there we got vouchers for something to eat and drink and then we were brought to a bus that would bring us to Sorkjosen… 4 h drive in the pitch dark. At a quarter past 1 in the morning the bus left us in front of our hotel and we just got our keys and off to bed.
The next morning Anja and Sven from Northern Explorers waited for us in the Lobby and we went to the boat to get some security information. Since I had been on the boat twice before I knew the drill. After that we went back to our hotel for some more sleep because we couldn’t go out for the whales due to the storm. We met in the afternoon for coffee and cake and my Iceland cake was reeeeaaallllyyyyy good. After that the weather app told us that it had stopped raining (it lied! 😉 ) and together with Verena I walked around the village. 1.5 h later we had seen the entire village (including airport). 😀
The next morning we got up early again and then came a day of which I can honestly say that it was one of the best days of my life. Lots of whale action (humpbacks and orcas) and the sky was just awesome. The days started to get really short so sunrise was close to end when sunset started. That day we had a spectacular nearly two hours sunset and I took the time to just stand on the boat and enjoy. Those were moments that were really difficult to forget. Excuse me when I got a bit overboard with pics from that day…. 😉 After dinner we went out to check for northern lights but even with wishful thinking and lots of imagination we couldn’t see more than a very slight green veal.