We finally did get out on our Northern Lights tour. And since I am writing this in the airline lounge in Salt Lake City waiting for our last flight home, I am not going to be as verbose as I was going to.
Here is it in a nutshell. The Northern Lights, seen with the naked eye, look a lot different than they do when one takes a picture of them. All those colors? They are just sort of grey. Unless you are extremely lucky to get the lights on a particularly spectacular day. Of those on our tour, about 2/3rds were photographers. They actually had a pretty good time. Our guide was quite attentive in getting them the shots they needed and helping them adjust. Most of them were happily shooting away for hours.
Those of us who didn't have cameras or weren't into that kind of photography pretty much were done after about 30 minutes. Fortunately, it wasn't horribly cold. But still, after about an hour, that 1/3rd of us were huddling by a fire the guide had built trying to stay warm and amuse ourselves. Finally, even all but two of the photographers were done and we had to wait another long-time before the guide thought we'd got our money's worth and would take us back to the van. Oh and I fail to mention that we went down this steep snow-covered bank to the waterside for the final pictures that were really challenging to our balance. Going up at the end was worse.
I am not quite sure how the whole 'Northern Lights Tourism Industry' has kept this information that most of what you see with your eyes is not what is seen in a photograph so quiet. We certainly did not run into that information as we did our research. I think the thing that really put an exclamation point on the experience was a conversation we had with your Somali immigrant cab driver back to the airport. Asked if he had ever seen colored Northern Lights. He extolled about an amazing experience where the whole sky and the town itself were green from the lights...once...in 8 years!
We were back at the hotel at 1 AM so were able to get a bit of sleep before we took off the next morning. A final Norwegian insult...I had currency I wanted to change into dollars. There is no currency exchange at the airport. This is a small but busy airport with lots of foreign visitors coming in. One would think a currency exchange would be practical. There were machines for changing currency but they only took one size of bill...not the size I had.
We flew to Paris where we stayed the night before returning today. At the airport hotel, we had a very acceptable meal with appetizer, two mains, four drinks and two desserts for half of what we had paid in Tromso. And it tasted good.
Put Norway on the list of places we will not be going back to.
3 comments:
Jeeze that sounds like a mega bummer! Sounds like places where you are trapped for 1 activity the prices go up, the quality relative to that cost goes down (where else are you gonna go?). Naturally if the 1 activity you came to do isn't great, that poses a problem. But I thought you and mom would consider yourselves among the 2/3 photographers? And was mom okay getting in and out of the vehicle?
Mom was. I didn't have time to figure out what was necessary for the photography so bailed on that before we got there...an error it would seem.
The van was actually more like a small bus and was very easy to get in and out of.
I always said I wanted to take a trip to see the Northern lights. Guess I should do my research first. I bet G got some good pictures anyway.
Post a Comment