Whale Watching : I am never seeing this many whales again

Humpback going for a dive

Now that we were in tip-top condition after our ski expedition we went on a whale watching tour the next day. Now I've been on whale watching tours before, which have been universally disappointing. You may see some bit of a whale in the very far distance, and then a bunch of dolphins might swim around the boat, and that's it. So going into this tour I was probably the least enthusiastic, since I kind of thought it was going to be more of the same. Oh man, was I wrong.

We saw our first whale within the first 5 minutes. We saw so many whales that by the end of the day I was a bit bored with them all, it's like, oh another whale. The guide later said that she was a bit worried, since it took us a full 5 minutes to see our first whale. Apparently it's normally quicker than that. I think I saw more whales in that one day, then I am likely to see for the rest of my life. It was incredible.

Amazing lights in the morning

A whole family of orca

The other, slightly more amazing thing, is that the whales have only been visiting this fjord for the last 5 years. Five years ago you couldn't even go on a whale watching cruise, they didn't exist in Tromso. But 5 years ago the herrings turned up, and the whales followed. The herrings used to occur further south, but I guess global warming is pushing them further north.

It's amazing visiting Norway, since they have these signs all around them as to how the climate is changing, so on almost all fronts they are completely environmentally conscious. But then they still hunt whales. Because the whale hunt is tied in with their Viking ancestry, and nobody can touch that. The populace is totally behind the whale hunting. You feel like the Viking time was their golden age, they did ransack a lot of Europe, so fair enough if they want to hold on to that. But it feels like they might be entering a second golden age, what with their immense oil wealth, that they haven't squandered on middle-class tax breaks. I wonder if that will change their whale hunting stance.

Yet more humpback

The whales you will see from Kvaloya are humpbacks and orca, and they are so awesome. You get pretty close to them, of course the boat has to stay 100m away from the whales, but they are free to swim up to you. We had a humpback right next to the boat, we were saying to each other, what is that white thing under the water, turned out to be a whale! And the noise of them spouting the water, it was all around you. It really was another awesome tour. Seriously everything we did in Tromso was amazing.

A beautiful spot for a boat ride

Can actually see it's spot

This is were we actually met a Norwegian tour guide, there weren't many of them, he was captain of the boat. It sounded like this was a bit of a holiday for him, since he used to live on Svalbard. Now Svalbard sounds like this amazing place. It's basically as north as you can go, there's only the Arctic further north. They get the true polar night, pitch black the whole time, I don't know how you would survive it, and people live there all year. They have polar bears there. So even though you think it's pretty tough living in Tromso, there is always somewhere more hard core. In fact Tromso is a paradise compared to Svalbard. This captain was a real viking though, really tall, red hair, super tough hands. And yet so nice and friendly. Man I love Norwegians.