Midnight sun tour in a RIB

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Another lazy morning spent catching up, researching for my trip (still have a few places to sort out) and just relaxing.

Early afternoon I went for a walk around the town, took some photos that I think capture the essence of the place and browsed in a few shops. I realised that since I left Sydney almost 6 weeks ago, I haven't really had any down time, so these couple of days are certainly helping to recharge the batteries!

Around 4pm I decided to get something to eat and stopped at a little cheap looking Asian cafe. Looks can deceive - I just paid $27 for a chicken fried rice and a mineral water!

This afternoon the clouds cleared and it was a beautiful, blue sky day. Actually, the beautiful blue sky 'day' went into the night which was fortunate for me as I had the Midnight Sun tour on a RIB (ridged inflatable boat) scheduled for 10pm. Finally the time came and I headed down to the front of my hotel to meet the Tour Guide.

When I booked 2 days ago I was the only guest but since then several other people joined, which was great. There were 7 others and they were all from Spain (although 3 of them made it clear they are from Catalan ?!). Our tour guide was from Bolivia so this meant they all spoke Spanish although he did remember from time to time to switch to English. We walked to the company office as we needed to change into floatation suits and boots and get a life jacket and mittens. That whole process was a bit of a laugh! There were a couple of people in the group that made a bit of an effort to talk to me - they were all very interested in me being from Australia. Once we were suited up, we waddled our way to the dock. Everything in Tromsø is very close - the office was on one side of my hotel and the dock in the other!

Our next challenge was to board th RIB - a balancing feat! Once we were all on board we zoomed off in the direction of some islands, although to be honest, everything here is an island! For the first 45 minutes we went full throttle - heading straight towards the sun. We arrived to our destination in time to see many, many puffins floating on the water amongst other birds and we stopped the boat for a while so we could all move about and get photos. The puffins are very shy and they won't let you get closer than 20 meters so it was difficult to photograph them. After a while we headed further out until we came to a spot to stop, at around 11:45pm, so we could take in our surrounds and take more photos as the sun was getting closer to the horizon.

For those people who love to capture a sunset shot, this place is heaven! The sun just kisses the horizon and stays there before it starts its slow ascent back up into the sky. Magic! And we were in the perfect place to experience this.

We gentle motored around some smaller islands and came across an interesting sight. On one of the rocky outcrops there were two goats and when they saw us they started baaaaing and walking towards our boat. Our guide Francisco said he thought they were goats that could swim as he had seen them on the nearby outcrop 3 days previous. That seemed a bit strange but it was hard to understand what they were doing out there. They certainly looked like they wanted us to rescue them!

After a while we saw a seal swim out and more birds and puffins. It was so beautiful sitting on the side of the boat, as the water lapped the sides and the phenomenon of the midnight sun was playing out right in front of us.

Around 12:30am we rugged back up and sat ourselves down for the fast ride back to port. Even though it was very chilly the thrill of the ride and the sights along the way made it all worthwhile. It was sometime after 1:30 when we got back and we walked back to the office to change. Even now the light was so nice it really did feel like early evening.

Back at my hotel I had a glass of red wine to warm up as I reviewed all my photos from the wonderful evening. Before I knew it, it was 3am so I shut my blinds and made myself go to sleep! I think I would live really weird hours if I lived in this town for too long!

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