At about 3:45am our room buzzer sounded and an announcement came that there were northern lights to be seen. As we were quite tired we ignored this and kept sleeping. At breakfast we were then told about the rather nice lights by some of the other passengers. Drat! 🙂 Hopefully we will have another chance tonight…
We also slept through our stopover at Hammerfest at 5am. We were up by the time the ship docked at Havoysund howeveer, and Micha ducked out on deck to take some pictures and have a stroll around in the brisk air. It was an absolutely lovely clear morning with no wind whatsoever.
Breakfast almost rolled into lunch for us, as we had our only booked excursion in Honningsvåg, which we arrived at just after 11am. It was the usual queue of people waiting to get off the ship but soon we were bundled into a bus and rolling out of town and up into the mountains. Our destination was the tiny fishing village of Skarsvåg which lies on the other side of a mountain range from Honningsvåg. The driver took the icy roads with some abandon..
In either case we arrived safely and were met by Heidi, a local lady who’s lived there all her life. Her husband was still out at sea due to the strong winds, so we did not get to meet him, however another fishing boat came into the tiny port while we were there and we watched the crew unload their catch and prepare it for shipping.
Afterwards we had waffles and a home-made Glühwein made out of cider in her “christmas house” – a little house she keeps decked out with christmas decorations all year round. She told us a little about life in the village and how all the children (except her youngest, now 15) have moved away so only the older fishermen and their wives are left. Half the houses in the village now stand empty, but they sstill keep lights burning in all the windows for the returning fishermen. Quite sad really.
By the time we returned to the ship around 3pm it was already nearly dark. We relaxed and napped for the afternoon until we reached the town of Kjøllefjord. Just before we got there we passed a lit-up rock formation for which Micha got out on deck to photograph. It’s a famous Sami site.
We were also joined on the ship by a local fishermen who arrived on a fast motor launch. He came up on deck 7 with several king crabs to show off. King crabs aren’t native to these waters and are considered a pest as they are breeding very quickly and displacing local species. These days they are fished as well. Micha found the display a little disturbing as the live king crabs were plopped onto several tables so that the cruise guests could poke and prod them and take photos while holding them up. Talk about animal cruelty.
Once docked at Kjøllefjord, Micha went for a quick walk to the town “centre” and back again to stretch his legs. Afterwards we spent a lovely evening up in the piano bar with Gary and Helen and Kit listening to Euston play.
Late in the evening Micha rugged up and spent several hours out on deck watching some dim northern lights. There was a pretty good display for a few minutes shortly after ???, where the ship had docked for 10 minutes or so.
