Europe's northernmost outpost

Again we woke to a new vista. This time it was the small port of Honningsvåg. The port's proximity to North Cape though makes it something of a magnet for tour ships, of which they get some 200 a year we were told.

Off our port side, another ship appeared. It wasn't obvious at first whether it was bigger than us or not as it gently manoeuvred against the waiting quayside with attendant dock-hands. It turned out to be the 'Vision of the Seas', one of the large Royal Caribbean fleet, with only (!!) 1,800 passengers on board out of a possible 2,400 or so (we have just 800 or so when fully occupied).

So it was substantially bigger than Black Watch as would be obvious when we could see it side on.

A fleet of buses was waiting for us and the hundreds of passengers off the 'Vision of the Seas'. Fortunately, we were first in the queue and our two buses got away smartly.

The weather was as good as we could possibly hope for at such latitudes and we enjoyed much spectacular scenery and the odd herd of grazing reindeer as we were driven even further north.

One wonders if the bus drivers have a small financial incentive to stop at certain locations? As our buses pulled up at an unremarkable shed, with a couple of tepee-like tents, a local Sami (indigenous local people) man appeared from the house across the road to pose beside the reindeer for us tourists, in the hope that we'd buy something from his wife in the shop in the shed.

The poor reindeer was rather bored with it all, but perked up a little when offered some fresh moss:

The driver was obviously keen to get on though, so we set off in the lead this time, heading for the end of the northernmost road in Europe, at North Cape. Being one of the first buses to arrive there gave us the best choice of seats in the theatre for another wide-screen presentation; again, most interesting and enjoyable.

Then there was plenty of time to wander around admiring the views and being photographed (and in turn photographing others) by the globe (admire the views for yourself here). 

It was windy, to say the least, and this far into the Arctic a bit on the cold side, but not as bad as it might have been had the weather not been so kind to us. There was plenty more to see and of course, the gift shop. Then it was time to try and find which was our bus ......

A bit of excitement on the drive back when a reindeer decided the grazing on the road looked better than the rocks on either side. The car approaching from the far side stopped as did our bus driver, but the car behind us obviously didn't think the reindeer's life was of any importance and, ignoring the solid white no-overtaking line, whizzed past us, just missing the reindeer.

After a bit of dithering, it decided that life looked better on the hillside with the rest of herd, and it ambled off:

In due course, we got back to Honningsvåg and looked around the limited selection of frighteningly expensive shops. Even the large friendly troll couldn't persuade us to part with very much money though. Barbara posted a card home from the Post Office for which we took out a second mortgage!

Admiring the Vision of the Seas on the way back for lunch:

Some of the larger boats in the Royal Caribbean fleet even have gardens with real trees in. Our little ship is friendly and has everything we need though, and it has good brakes. We stopped just in time to avoid causing a traffic jam!!!

And here's another view showing the attractive prow:

In the evening, Charlie was booked on the Zodiac & Ice Bar trip. It started here with eight of us donning hi-vis immersion suits in case we should fall in the freezing seas (actually, the Barents Sea [I think] was a relatively balmy 10 degrees centigrade or so, so we would have survived for at least ten minutes!).

 Once we were dressed, we waddled down to the Zodiac with its huge outboard motors, and the bolder among us sat on the outside edges, preparing to hang on grimly to the ropes which were all we had to prevent us being bounced into a cold bath.

Sadly, I wasn't bold enough during the trip to get my phone out to take a photo (and the video isn't worth showing) so the excitement during the trip of the sea eagles, puffin and other things isn't available for the blog.

When we got back to shore and managed to stand up again, despite our wobbly legs, we were led a few yards to the Ice Bar. Here, everything, more or less, is made of ice, the walls, the bar, the decorations:

And because it's a bit cold inside, we all had nice little penguin suits to keep us from freezing while we examined the igloo:

And drank our complimentary fruit juices (you had to pay extra for real alcohol!) from the glasses made of ice:

And back to the ship to find an alternative source of food, having missed our early sitting for dinner. Then, it was announced that we'd leave via North Cape - a bit of a detour, but in the thousands of kilometres we're doing, not a significant change. So we left Honningsvåg:

And were soon steaming past many of the bits of coast we'd seen from the Zodiac, but the ship's size scared away any sea eagles, so it wasn't as exciting. Then, as it was getting dark (as dark as it gets at these latitudes) we passed north of North Cape. The relatively low cloud prevented us from seeing the globe we'd seen earlier in the day, but we did see 'The Horn' rock outcrop, which we hadn't seen, so that was good.

And that's about it for Monday.

Sorry it's late - ran out of credit on the phone!