Tromsø 2025

November 3rd, 2025 – Whale watching

We had booked anoth­er whale safari for today. After Simone’s bad expe­ri­ence on the last boat safari, which she spent most­ly lying on a bench in the boat due to sea­sick­ness, this time only the three of us set off ear­ly. We delib­er­ate­ly chose a date at the begin­ning of the trip because we were afraid that the tour might be can­celed due to bad weath­er (as was the case on our last trip) and we would then still have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to choose an alter­na­tive date.

This time, how­ev­er, the weath­er was kind to us, and the sky was only slight­ly cloudy. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, our provider had changed both the boat and the pier in the mean­time, so we first had to search for the new boat. When we final­ly arrived, we were the last guests, and we set off straight away.

In the pic­ture above, tak­en from the boat, you can see the Trom­søbrua bridge con­nect­ing Trom­sø with the south­ern main­land and, on the left, the Arc­tic Cathe­dral.

In the last pic­ture: A mir­ror self­ie of the pho­tog­ra­phers in their nat­ur­al habi­tat 😉. It was very cold, espe­cial­ly due to the wind.

The trip ini­tial­ly took us north­east into the deep­er fjord for almost two hours. The trip itself was very enjoy­able in the beau­ti­ful weath­er, and after about an hour the sun came up. We also saw sev­er­al light­hous­es along the coast, which made for some nice pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties in the beau­ti­ful light:

After about 70 km and almost 2 hours of cruis­ing, we final­ly saw our first hump­back whale, which showed off its tail fin a bunch of times. If you look close­ly, you can see it has ath­lete’s foot on its left side 🤣

Lat­er, we came across a large group of orcas:

Whale safari: other mammals in the water

And among the many whales, there were actu­al­ly a few hominids swim­ming around too 😉:

This seems to be the lat­est tourist craze: div­ing with orcas. At least 20 tourists were dropped off from sev­er­al rub­ber dinghies and hap­pi­ly snorkeled around the orcas.

Whale safari: Returning

All in all, the tour was very suc­cess­ful. I took a total of 2,600 pho­tos, which hap­pens very quick­ly at a sequence of 20 images per sec­ond. How­ev­er, since the whales only appear briefly, I was often too late. That meant a lot of post-pro­cess­ing was required, with the big major­i­ty of the images end­ing up in the trash.

On the long way back, the sun was already set­ting again. Cur­rent­ly, the sun rose here at 8:21 a.m. and set again at 2:32 p.m. We were back at the har­bor around 3:30 p.m., where Simone picked us up with our rental car. She had also enjoyed the day, vis­it­ing the Polar­ia Muse­um and strolling through the city in the beau­ti­ful weather.

Dinner at the Hard Rock Café

We then went shop­ping and saw on our North­ern Lights app at home that the Auro­ra Index was high. The weath­er was also on our side; con­trary to the fore­cast, the sky was almost cloud­less in the evening and we could already see the first North­ern Lights. We quick­ly man­aged to get a table at the local Hard Rock Café and ate tacos, burg­ers, and salads.

Har­ry had kind­ly refrained from drink­ing alco­hol so that he could dri­ve us to the pho­to spot we had scout­ed the day before at Ers­fjord.

We quick­ly made our way to Ers­fjord and—what can I say—it was incred­i­ble. The moon was shin­ing bright­ly in the sky, mak­ing the sur­round­ing moun­tains clear­ly vis­i­ble. There’s some­thing mag­i­cal about the North­ern Lights. There were lots of oth­er peo­ple there with us, and every­one was thrilled. We spent a good hour and a half admir­ing the swirling green bands of light. Here are some pho­tos from our trip:

And here’s anoth­er short time-lapse video I cre­at­ed from the indi­vid­ual shots:

cWe then drove back around mid­night and, after an exhaust­ing, event­ful, and long day, fell into bed death­ly tired.