Hurtigruten; Friday, 01 February, 2013

It was still snowing heavily as we had breakfast watching the people of Harstad port go around their business. I finished my breakfast just as the boat was pulling out of the harbour, so didn’t get the full enjoyment of those people still having breakfast when we went through a pretty choppy bit of water just outside the harbour.

A little further on and we finally reached the back edge of the snow and within minutes the scenery had changed from low clouds and snow to clear skies and a wide vista across snow covered mountains. About an hour later we docked at Finnsnes, which was still covered in snow, but in the glorious sun it appeared like a fairy tale version of a Norwegian town.

After a short stop in Finnsnes it was back on the boat and North again, this time to the capital of Arctic Norway, Tromsø.

There were a range of activities that had been arranged in Tromsø, including city coach tours and walking tours, but as I’d already had a couple of days in Tromsø a few years earlier I opted instead to go husky sledging in the countryside just outside of town.

We were met at the quayside by a coach from the centre which took us out to the Husky centre, about 25KM out of town. After kitting up in very warm snow suits we got into our sledges and went for a 30 minute ride through the countryside with the Alaskan Huskies clearly enjoying it as much as their human passengers.

After the ride there was a little time to meet some of the dogs, and then have coffee and cake in a traditional Sami tent before catching the coach back to Tromsø and re-boarding the boat.

We continued sailing north towards Skjervøy, and whilst we did, very faintly, the Northern lights started to appear in front of the boat. They were only very slight, a green trace that only really showed up on long exposure photos, but we had at least found some, the question was would there be any more before the end of the trip.