The Adventure Begins

It was always going to be a long day. Up at 1.30 am to be at Humberside airport for 3.30am. Our flight to Eveness in Norway left on time at 5am and after two and a half hours we landed in sub-zero temperatures at our destination.

The trip was my birthday present to Sara back in November. She has always wanted to swim with dolphins and go whale watching. Not being able to afford both at the time I settled or a compromise. I found a company called Transun who do trips under the banner of "Just for the day." One of the trips was called Orca Safari and involved tracking Killer Whales in the Norwegian Fjords and then jumping in the water and swimming with them - how cool does that sound?

So the trip was booked and the birthday present delivered and now we were on our way to fulfil a dream...

The first thing we noticed when we stepped off the plane in Eveness was the snow and ice. If there had been a modicum of what we saw in the UK, all roads and airports would have been closed and we would be told to travel only if our journey was absolutely necessary. Here though, it was all in a days work.

We were loaded onto a coach and driven to the port of Narvik where we all boarded our boat for the day. At 9am it was still very dusky outside. We soon found out that, at this time of year, this was as light as it got, and it would be as dark as night by two thirty in the afternoon. An interesting experience to say the least.

We were introduced to Stuart who would be responsible for looking after us for the day. I decided that Stuart must be our "Fjord Escort!"

We would select one of the many Fjords and concentrate on that one. This would be our "Fjord Focus!"

I also decided that should we have a long party following our adventure this would be known as our "Fjord Fiesta!" My lady wife soon tired of my 'jokes' and I let them lie.

There was a choice of three safaris:

To travel on the boat and view the whales from the deck or the comfort of the heated cabin area
To transfer to small dingy type boats called zodiac boats and view the whales close up
To travel in the zodiac boats and then get into the fjord with the whales and become a visitor in their habitat

As I explained, we took the third option

We had a few concerns once we were told that the temperature of the water would be at best 20 degrees BELOW zero. However no one had died yet so why should we be the first and, after all, these guys know what they are doing - right?