Day 5 - Leave Kirkenes

Today was spent mostly on the ship. We boarded at about 12:45pm but did not leave as timed because someone had broken their leg off the ship and we had to wait for them. Eventually we departed the Kirkenes port at 1:30pm so we were a little behind schedule. Our ship was called Polarlys which means polar lights.

Our ship from the Kirkenes dock.

Dinner tonight was at 8:30pm so at the next port, Vardø, we went to the grocery to get some snacks before dinner.

Ice age characters promoting bread.

Reindeer jerky!  I bought some.

At 6:30pm an annoucement was made that the northern lights were visible so we scuttled up to the level 7 deck to have a look. We can't get enough of the lights, it was amazing!! I took some photos but this time without the tripod and on a higher ISO, they turned out a bit grainier but you can see see them here.

We had a short nap after that before dinner as we haven't been getting enough sleep lately. Dinner was allocated seating on table 26. We had dinner with the same elderly couple on our first night and another (not so) elderly couple. I would say they are in their late 40s or mid 50s. Both are British, lots of British people on board this ship. Our entree was fish soup, followed by a main course of reindeer steak (which tastes exactly like liver) with reindeer sausage, and cloudberry ice cream was for dessert. I particularly liked the ice cream and the berries. We were the only ones to finish our main meal, not everyone else was game enough to finish it. :)

Photos of northern lights from the deck

Tea followed after dinner then it was bed time. Very short day. Tomorrow we will go off on an Arctic Energy tour at the northernmost town, Hammerfest.

Day 4 - King Crab Fishing (Freaking Awesome)

We visited the museum this morning after getting back from the Snow Hotel.  The tour guide woke us up close to 9am and we were the last to leave.  He drove us to our new "real" hotel, the Rica Arctic hotel where we dropped our things off then took a walk to the museum.

Where we are, and where we could possibly go...

The museum.  A Chinese woman from Beijing served us at the counter, she married a Norwegian, that's how she ended up there.

Some exhibits in the museum.  There were 2 floors, the 1st floor was mostly World War 2 related facts and stories, and the 2nd floor was more about the history of Kirkenes but it was all in Norwegian so we only understood what was on the 1st floor.

Propaganda posters.

Bomb shell.

We headed back at 12:30 as we were going to be picked up at 1pm.  So lunch was chips that we bought from the grocery back at Tromsø.  Our guide picked us up at 1pm, his name was Oerjan and he turned out to be a great guide!  We had no idea what we were in for.  He basically gave us a history of the area while driving us around, took us to the same scenic spot we were yesterday and even drove us to the Russia Norway border!  Our fishing spot was Lanabukt and took about half an hour to get there, it's close to the Russia Norway border so he showed us that area too which is quite nice of him.

Our tour guide on the left, he wasn't really a guide but... a one man show, guide, chef, fisherman...

Dam and church in Russia.

One footstep I was away from Russian territory, taken near Storskog.

After that we continued to our destination, then prepped ourselves to go on the boat for fishing!

Prepping the boat.

Here's one of the crabs, it's pretty big, about 1m in length!  We got a few.

Check out the size of its teeth, it's apparently the size of a horse's tooth.

Oerjan holding up one of the crabs.

After he gutted them, this was our catch...

King crab fishing is now permitted as it's a pest in Norway, so we are helping to control the population.

We also went further up the fjord to have a look at the salmon farm.  The ice was hitting everyone in the face and I caught this picture. :)

After that we had a short drive, then when we thought it was all over, we went on a ski doo out to the bush where we were going to cook the crabs!  I had fuel in my face as I was sitting in the back on a sleigh attached.  Haha!  Anyway Oerjan made a fire and then cooked the crab.  We were sitting around the fire but it was still freezing!!

It was nice though, different.  Eating distracted us from the cold. :)

Our cooked crab!

We did not manage to finish all of it, but don't worry the remains will be given to the foxes.

Now it's close to 3am and I have to sleep.  Tomorrow we get on the boat again which I am not really looking forward to so this could be my last post for a while but hopefully not.

Day 3 - Kirkenes Snow Hotel

Day 3 dropped us off at Kirkenes at 9:30am, a small but historic mining town of 3300 people, early in the morning. Kirkenes doesn't get the gulf stream so it's colder here and the waters turn into ice along the coast.  That night we were going to sleep in their Snow Hotel which is rebuilt every year with different patterns on the walls. Very cool. It's maintained at a steady temperature of -4 degrees C.

We spent the afternoon wandering about as we had to wait for the bus to pick us up at 6pm.  We got into town at 11:30am so there was a lot of time to kill.  We were going to go King Crab fishing initially but it was cancelled.  Eventually we got onto another tour operator (one man show) for the next day so that was fantastic otherwise we would have had nothing to do in this small town.  That took about an hour to sort out (done at 12:30pm!) so we had some lunch after that and wandered about some more.

Town of Kirkenes taken from a scenic spot (which was covered up by piles and piles of snow!)

Zoomed in view.

More of the town.

A bed taken in one of the rooms of the Snow Hotel (taken with camera flash).  There are 20 rooms in all, 2 corridors with 10 rooms, 1 on each side.  Each room is different with different wall artefacts.  The area connecting the 2 corridors is an ice bar and the entrance is connected to the ice bar.  And instead of a door to a room you have curtains.

Bear paw in one of the rooms, no flash used.

The ice bar where our guide served us some tasty cloud berry juice.

Room located at the end of the corridor.

Crab in ice!  This was part of the wall in the room with the ice bar.

One of the corridors.

Lauren sitting on one of the ice furniture.. it's coooooold.  Natural lighting in background.

Me next.  Different chair.

We had a 3 course meal with reindeer sausage wrapped in pancake as starter.  We had to cook our sausage by the fire in the restaurant.

The restaurant from the outside.

Some of the interior of the restaurant.

After dinner we caught some of the northern lights.  It was simply awesome, the sky was clear, there weren't many people around, not many lights and seeing the lights dance magically was a sight to behold!  I took some photos too, here are the best ones.

More lights.  The house is a shed containing our clothes for the night, i.e. sleeping bag.

In case you were wondering, the toilets are located in a different building.  We were only allowed to bring a small bag of extra clothes with us.  Each of us slept in a sleeping bag and wore layers of wool or whatever we brought to sleep.  I slept okay except my face was freezing and I woke up probably a few times but I did get sleep after covering my face with my beanie.  So I can say I slept in -4 degrees C with nothing but a sleeping bag!  All in all, an experience to remember :)

Day 1 - Tromsø (photos), Day 2 - NordKapp (photos)

This is an update with photos! Currently we're in Kirkenes and I finally have some decent internet speeds. We're at the Rica Arctic hotel. Anyway here they are.

Day 1 was in Tromsø. Spent most of the time exploring around. There was a lot of pee and poo spots everywhere. Surprisingly. Things are also pretty expensive here. But we got some food (popcorn, chips, some soft drink, vodka, bread, cheese spread) to take on board the ship anyway. We boarded the ship at around 2:30pm, dropped off our luggage then went exploring.

The church along the main street.

Our boat.  It's pretty cool to be on one until you get the motion sickness.

I took a photo while shopping for groceries.  It's about 3.60 Australian dollars for 500mls of orange juice!

Monument in downtown Tromsø.

Downtown Tromsø.

The harbour. Tromsø is an island surrounded by fjords.

We saw some Northern Lights that night but taking photos was in vain.

Day 2 was in Nordkapp, the northern most point of Europe. The boat dropped us at the Honningsvåg port then we caught a bus to Nordkapp. There were a lot of people on the bus, 6 in total, consisting of Germans, French, English, etc. Each bus had its own language guide. The road was also unaccessible, a snow plouger had to clear the road for us otherwise there was no way to get up there.  Before Nordkapp we took a tour of the ship's bridge.

South park style computer panel.

Ship captain and I.

Norwegian coastline on the way to Honningsvåg.

Shell station located exactly at 71 degrees longitude north, that's what makes it special.  Took this from the bus.  Someone's big head was in the way.

One of the arrows pointing to the North Cape structure.

At the North Cape structure.  Had to wait for everyone to get on board the bus before we could get decent photos.  The weather also cleared up at the end which was good.

Water merging into clouds, how cool is that?

This is a structure at Honningsvåg.  We boarded the ship en route to Kirkenes.

The same night after dinner we caught a spectacular display of northern lights on the ship's bridge.  Couldn't get any photos though it was very dark and a lot of people were moving along the aisle but it was still something very special to remember.