Daily Archives: June 24, 2014

Tuesday, 24th June, 2014

Country: Norway
Distance travelled:
Weather: Overcast morning but clearing later

I got up early to turn the boiler up to its high temperature and to set the heating going as well and then returned to our comfortable snug bed. When I woke again, nearly an hour later, the van was pleasantly warm and the boiler was all set to go for a shower. Oh heaven…. Mostly for everyone I would be coming into contact with later on today. I even lashed out with clean clothes but mostly because they would be my warmest anyway and if we were going out onto the open ocean, I wanted to be warm!

The day wasn’t looking as pleasant as we had hoped with cloud covering the skies and the occasional wind gust rocking the van. We took our time getting prepared since we didn’t need to be back in Andenes until after 1.30pm. I even took the time to dig my thermal underwear out of a suitcase in the garage. Eventually we headed in, and since it was on our route, we stopped at the service point we had seen yesterday to refill our depleted water supplies and empty what needed to be emptied.

Upon reaching the carpark near the Whale Safari office we decided to check if they supply a seasickness tablet. We are both somewhat scarred (yes, scarred) in this regard by the ferry trip to the Lofotan Islands. The lady at the reception told us they recommend a herbal mixture, mostly ginger I think. Both of us were desirous of finding something with a more chemical effectiveness. Luckily we had spotted the local Apotek on our way into town and knew exactly where to go.

After a light lunch in the van, we finished our preparations and headed back into the reception for the Whale Safari. While we were waiting to register, I picked up a couple of brochures and voila! our questions about the space centre, rockets and antennas we had seen yesterday were answered:

The Spaceship Aurora is a learning and visitor centre at Andøya Space Center which focuses on Northern Lights research. Visitors will experience the day-to-day life at a space centre, and conduct a Northern Lights research mission.

Despite the brisk wind blowing, the weather had improved 100% and we now had clear blue skies and sunshine. The tour operators obviously saw this as a good thing too as they moved up the time for our trip to 3pm. Everyone registered and then we were divided up into groups depending on language and taken through their museum where the young man leading us attempted to relieve us of as much whale-orientated ignorance as was possible in a short time.

Museum tour over, we were encouraged to get ourselves over to the pier where our boat was ready for boarding. We could have driven around but had a good parking spot where we were and it was only a ten minute walk in the sun. Once on board, there was the obligatory safety talk in three languages, English, German and another I couldn’t identify. The repeated instruction to not jump into the water but get into the lifeboats in an emergency was a little disconcerting. It is hard to imagine that the water is so cold that such a warning is necessary. I’m not going swimming though, just in case.

Our boat, the M/S Reine, soon set out. We were not more than half an hour from the harbour when the lookout, a man with headphones linked to an underwater microphone, let everyone know that he could hear the sonar clicking of at least three different sperm whales. Everyone crowded the rails hoping to see something. Soon enough, a staff member pointed out a blow in the distance and the boat turned and headed in that direction.

Before long we were close, maybe thirty meters and could see the huge mammal in the swell. He swam along, occasionally spraying water vapor into the air as he breathed, for about seven or eight minutes and then dove. As his tail rose above the water surface, cameras clicked wildly around us. We both had our cameras on high speed so were adding to the shutter noise but we found upon discussion, that the cameras were pausing after about ten shots to finish writing to disk. Mark realised it was actually the write speed to the smaller SD cards, in the cameras for backup, that was causing the problem so they were swiftly removed for the rest of the day.

Sperm Whale Tail

Another sperm whale was soon spotted, they are all male we are told, in this area of ocean to feed unlike the females and calves south in warmer waters. The same process was followed and again we were close, watching him swim along until he dove under the surface again with a flip of a huge tail. The crew cast about a bit, following one sonar sign and another until suddenly we were surrounded by a pod of between twenty and thirty Orcas. Later discussion indicated it was probably two separate pods, hunting in the same area with the seagulls circling above. The captain must have followed them around the ocean for nearly an hour and all on board were amazed to have seen them since they aren’t usually in the area until winter when their preferred fish are schooling here.

Frollicking Killer Whales

It was a surprise to look up at one point and see just how close we were to the coastline as I could make out buildings at the harbour and the return trip was no longer than it took to drink the cup of vegetable soup supplied to ward the chill. Soon enough, we were docked and with everyone profusely thanking the crew, headed back to where we had left the van. Mark scanned the nearly 1000 photos we had returned with and, finding a free wifi connection, I uploaded just a couple to Facebook. Most of the shots are of dark shapes in the water, quite a number have somebody’s shoulder or arm in them and another percentage are out of focus but I’m sure there will be some great shots there and even if there isn’t, it was an incredible day I would gladly do all over again.

From Andenes, we drove to Sortland, a distance of about 100km. A detour out to the west of town to a parking spot from Autoroute turned out to be unsuitable for us (it was the carpark of a church where we felt we would be intruding) and we headed back to Sortland to a gravel area next to a Rema 1000 supermarket where we had seen a number of motorhomes already stopped for the night. Some leftover spaghetti meatballs were microwaved, we shut all the blinds and collapsed into bed, absolutely exhausted.