Advertisement
Published: March 8th 2020
Edit Blog Post
Day 6 of our cruise of the Arctic Circle with MS Kong Harald, and we sailed through Oksfjord and Hammerfest during the night. After breakfast, there's a Point of Interest talk on Deck 7, as we sail through Mageroysundet, about the Sami people and reindeers. It was really interesting but don't ask me to quote any fun facts, unfortunately I don't retain information unless I write it down.
We arrrive in Honningsvag at 11.15am and have another shore excursion booked - The North Cape. This is one of the northernmost points on the European continent and during our 45minutes bus trip we marvelled at the spectacular sub-Arctic landscape. The latitude is North 71.10.21 degrees and the plateau itself soars 307 metres, almost vertically, above the Arctic Ocean. The North Cape is the point where the Norwegian Sea, part of the Atlantic Ocean, meets the Barents Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean. It is called Nordkapp in Norwegian.
As it's winter, we are required to follow a snow plough and all buses must remain in a convoy due to the amount of snow required to be cleared from the road. We're both wearing our snow spikes and we definitely need
them here, it's so icy as we walk around, taking in the views. The iconic 'globeĀ“ sculpture has become the symbol of North Cape, and is a popular spot to get that all-important picture. We wait until the crowds die down and then make our way over for a few photo's. Some loser decides to climb up and hang upside down, even though there's a sign saying Do Not Climb. Too bad he didn't fall on his head, that would have taught him.
Next, we head over to see the Children of the Earth monument. On June 15th, 1988 a group of seven children from Tanzania, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, Italy, Russia and USA spent a week together on the island and celebrated their stay by each designing a plaque. The monument was named 'Barn av Jorden' / 'Children of the Earth' , which is a symbol of co-operation, friendship, hope and joy. The monument comprises seven circular, freestanding plaques plus one which shows them all and describes the project. There is also the Mother and Child sculpture, by Eva Rybakken, which is pointing at the circular disks.
We get back to the ship at 2.45pm and spend the rest
of the afternoon catching up with friends and sharing stories of our excursion. There's a short stop at Kjollefjord at 5pm, to let off some of our passengers that are doing a snowmobile safari and we pick them up again at the next port, Mehamn. It's great to catch up with a few of them after their adventure and hear about their excursion as we're going on a snowmobile tomorrow.
After dinner, we get all our gear together and head outside to chase the Northern Lights again. I had a chat with Heinz this morning, one of the Expedition Team members , about my camera settings last night and how I didn't capture anything. He gave me some suggestions so armed with this new information, I was determined to get some photo's tonight.
Once again, there were a few diehards on the deck and it wasn't long before the lights appeared. With my camera on Live-View, I pointed it at the skyline and clicked away but yet again, NOTHING!!!! What was I doing wrong???? I walked around looking at other people's camera settings and even asked a few what their settings were and adjusted mine. Someone even asked
me if I had my lens cap off!!! What did they think I was - some kind of idiot. In desperation, we even downloaded an app for my iphone called Northern Lights Photo Taker, and this actually picked up the lights and some colour, but the photo's were quite grainy. Getting more and more frustrated, I'd had enough and by 10.30pm headed off to bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0478s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb