New Year 2025
We slept in a little longer on New Year’s morning and didn’t go to breakfast until 9:00 am. The weather wasn’t great, but we didn’t let that stop us and drove in the opposite direction this time (past the Arctic Cathedral heading south). A beautiful snow-covered winter landscape awaited us along the coast and the fjords.
The weather also got better and better, so that the drones were used several times in different places. Here are a few impressions of our tour.
On the way back, we made another stop a few kilometers outside Tromsø for some drone shots of the city:
Back at the hotel, we quickly took off our thick winter clothes and had a rest. The weather was good and the score in the Aurora app was high, so we decided to visit the photo spot on the Ersfjord again in the evening. Maybe we’ll be lucky again.
Speaking of luck: in the meantime we received an email from Arctic Whale Tours. Some guests had actually canceled so that they could offer us the whale safari again tomorrow. Of course we accepted immediately.
In the evening, we drove off again in our Toyota RAV 4 4x4. On the way, we had a quick dinner at Burger King at the airport (I’ll spare you the pictures here 😉). We then continued north-west to just before the island of Sommarøy. Unfortunately, the excursion was not very successful this time. We only saw a very weak northern light, with the naked eye it was only visible as a grey cloud, only the cell phone showed the colors a little more clearly. Here is just a cell phone photo without any artistic claim for documentation.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel without having achieved anything. Tomorrow we must get up early again, the whale safari starts at 8:15 am.
January 2nd, 2025
Whale safari, the second attempt. After another far too short night, we were once again wrapped up warm in the boat. It had become very cold, -11° C, but it was going to be clear. The course of our tour is marked in green on the map below.
The whale safari was very successful this time. We saw several humpback whales, orcas and a sperm whale - the orcas in a large group right next to the boat. Unfortunately, it was relatively dark, so it was very difficult to take photos. Due to the limited light conditions in the polar night, I only had my fast f/2.8 70-200m zoom with me. Despite the wide aperture, I still had to work with very high ISO values. Here are some pictures from the tour. The fluke (tail fin) belongs to a diving humpback whale:
Watching the huge animals was incredibly impressive. We have decided that we definitely want to do this again with better light conditions. In the meantime, we have therefore booked another Tromsø trip and another whale safari with the same operator for the beginning of November 2025.
In the evening, we had dinner at Restaurant Mathallen, a modern, industrial-chic restaurant that we had also booked well in advance. Here, too, there was a special holiday menu and the dinner was again very delicious. Here are some pictures of the menu to whet your appetite:
On the way back to the hotel, it snowed heavily again. Tromsø - a winter wonderland.