Oriana in search of the Northern Lights Part IV

And so we arrive in Alta, the port that most passengers on the cruise will have booked for, as this is the port for the Northern Lights. Did we see them ? Read on :-) 

You saw from yesterday's blog, that we had been treated to a snow fall overnight, and we were due to dock at noon. About 5 miles out, it started to snow again so the Captain decided to slowdown and put one of the fast RIB's into the water with one of the ships photographers for shot of Oriana in the snow.

Well as you can see it turned into a bit of a blizzard 

And we even had some small ice flows

So the Captain also added a tender

We then had to wait a while as the berth in is next to the runway of Alta airport, and there was a plane inbound. This must be one of the few berths in the world, where the Captain of a cruise ship has to get permission from air traffic control to dock :-)

But dock we finally did, and the snow cleared and the skies were cloud less with wall to wall beautiful  sunshine. Great I thought, thinking towards this evening when we leave the ship at 2230 for our excursion to go in search for the lights. 

But first, it was a quick lunch, then off to see the Ice Hotel

This is the 15th year that an ice hotel has been built in Alta, every year with a different theme, this years being The Vikings. If you watched the Joanna Lumley documentary, she stayed there.

As I said in a previous blog, this was a last minute decision to book the tour, but we were glad we did

Well, it would have been rude not to have a drink while we were there.

The Wedding Chapel

And so it was time to board the coach and make our way back to Oriana in this glorious sunshine, but as we made our way back, it got darker and darker, and yes another snow blizzard. Now I have had to stand in line many a time on the dockside waiting to board after coming back from a shore excursion but never in a snow blizzard, so another "first" for the list.

So just before the main event of the day, we had a presentation by Trygve Nygard, the guy that runs the tour company Gord Explorer who would take us for our search of the lights.

They have three sites that they use, one quite local to Alta, and 1, 50km north and 1, 50km south.

He then outlined the scientist forecast for the evening on the chance of a light show, and on a score of 1 to 10, it was 2.

You could feel the air of disappointment from the audience, but this was raised when he showed us all a photo he took when the forecast was 2, so there was hope.

He then showed us the weather forecast for the three sites, the close by one, and the northern one was cloudy with snow showers, more groans from the audience.

The southern site, was cloudy at times but with no snow, the downside was the temperature -26C.

So, at our allotted time of 2230, wearing as much clothing as we could, we boarded the coach, and we were off on our 60 minute ride to the site.

Looking out of the coach window, I was pleased to see the weather forecast was slightly out, as there was not a cloud in the sky and the stars twinkled and shone to guide us on our way.

It a bit of a shock to the system getting out of a warm coach into -26C and setting up the camera and tripod, but was it worth it ? 

I will let you decide, below are, some of the photos I took before both my batteries expired.

None have had any post production

I will post all of my photos when we get home, as there are far too many to post now.

I will also post a review of the cruise.