Far North

The scenery continues to be spectacular as we go north.

We’re past the time of the midnight sun, but the sky is still light at 11 pm:

We did an e-bike tour in Tromsø, the “Paris of the North.” According to the book “Exploring the Norwegian Coast,” that’s “not because the people are arrogant, or unwilling to speak English…,” but because it was a modern, elegant, cultured city in the mid-1800s. It’s still a delightful town – we’d love to come back and spend more time there.

As we rode back into town, people were jumping into the water from their boat. Our guide told us the water temperature is in the 50s – no, thanks! Perhaps they’d just come out of a sauna… Indeed, there was a public sauna on one of the docks – go heat up, then jump right in the harbor.

We stopped at a botanical garden on our tour. While it had many alpine plants (including a big collection of saxifrages), it also had many plants I have in the garden at home. Lady’s mantle, delphiniums, Darmera peltata (umbrella plant, native to California), daisies,… The warming of the Gulf Stream is amazing!

Here are some views of typical small ports of call:

Above Tromsø, the landscape started to match our mental pictures of the Arctic – no trees, stark, beautiful.

We saw dolphins as we came into Honningsvåg, where we took a bird-watching trip. A bus took across the island to the northern coast. We saw lots of reindeer, which are brought over by the Sami herders for the summer. We headed out from a small fishing village to visit the rocky islands off shore.

It was tough to take pictures on the rocking boat with a phone, but we got a few shots where you can at least see what the birds were! I was a little envious of the people with cameras with huge lenses, but I really don’t want to carry that around. We have too much luggage as it is!

We saw dozens of sea eagles (the two pictures at the top), puffins, arctic terns, gannets, cormorants, guillemots, gulls, razorbills, … and gray seals (well, their heads).

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We passed our furthest north point soon after this excursion – above 71 degrees north. Then we headed a little south and east to Kirkenes, the midway point of our cruise, which is further east than Istanbul! As we came into Kirkenes, the Barents Sea was a tropical-looking blue. (The all-knowing Google tells us it’s due to phytoplankton.)