Norway Day 4 - Tromsø

The hazards of traveling alone - late the night before I got a text from my tour company that was supposed to be operating my fishing expedition the next day that they did not have sufficient bookings to do my tour, and asked if I could move my tour. As I could not, they offered me a spot on their luxury yacht whale watching tour the next day. As heart broken as I was over not being able to fish for Cod and Salmon in Norway, I figured there were worse consolation prizes than a whale watching trip on a luxury yacht. Arriving at the dock at 8:30 in the morning, there wasn’t much to see as the sky was still pitch black - however we had a several hour boat ride in front of us and once the sunshine did start to illuminate the scenery, it was spectacular. (I mostly posted non-whale pics below, but bonus points if you can spot the whale)

After a majestic sunrise boat trip through the fjords, we got to our destination where the whales have been active recently. Due to the freezing cold air temperature, the whales weren’t hard to spot due to the trail of frozen mist left when the whales exhaled from their blowholes. After not too long we were able to spot a few humpback whales that we followed as they lazily meandered their way through the fjords. This may have been the coldest I have been so far on my trip, but I was mostly kept warm via the incredibly warm and emergency floatation jumpsuit we were provided. It was cold enough however to crash my phone, and drain everyones batteries crazy fast. Additionally, trying to photograph a whale is a bit like trying to photograph Big Foot, you’re never quite sure when they’re going to pop up, and given the high winds and rocking boat, getting a clear shot with a cell phone camera is near impossible. Below are a few of my better attempts, but just trust me when I say it was a lot cooler in person.