Day 15 – Tysfjord to Skibotn
Off to the zoo. Short drive to a ferry and then on to the Arctic Zoo (entry cost not included, about NOK240) as it opened at midday. Feeding tour started at 1pm. It was pretty informative, even if the animals didn’t always cooperate :-).
Two different types of cabins at this campsite. I was with 5 other guys in a self-contained cabin, power, heat, water, toilet, shower, TV, kitchen. Two sets of bunks in one bedroom and one queen like sized bed in the other bedroom. Used sleeping bag. A group of girls had a double storied self-contained cabin and everybody else had basic cabins.
This was where the polar plunge took place. There was about 3 of us that didn’t do it. I played camera man/boy recording the crazy people running in 🙂 (with permission, one of the group asked me to record with their phone). Safest option seemed to be to run into the river from the far bank (over the foot bridge from the camp) and that’s what all but a couple of our group did. No pressure to do the plunge, no issues with not doing it.
Yummy burgers for tea. Assembled your own from lots of different provided filling options.
NOK10 per 4min for the showers (if in a basic cabin). Laundry was NOK20 for a wash, free drying.
Fermented fish (eating) challenge for team points. Only one person was able to eat it and keep it down.
Day 16 – Skibotn to Olderfjord
Mostly just a driving day. Back to a basic cabin for everybody, power and heat. Sleeping bag used. Left for Nordkapp at 20:30. Took about 2 hours to get there. Interesting drive. Nordkapp is the northern most point on mainland Europe. Fairly fancy visitors centre. If it isn’t cloudy then you can see the sun bounce off the horizon. They had a (movie) theatre with a surround screen downstairs in the visitors centre that showed a whole year compressed down into 10-15mins. I bought it and another touristy film on DVD from the gift shop at ground level. I tried a time-lapse but it was a bit cloudy and I didn’t start it at quite the right time. Was quite cold, approaching 0 degrees. I bought some warm gloves from the gift shop at the accomodation. My notes say we were due back around 3am, I haven’t checked my GPS tracking to see what time we actually got back. It was still light though of course.
Day 17 – OLDERFJORD
Sleep in day. Brunch (and bubbles) from around 11:30. Lazy day lazing around the campsite. Went for a bit of hike. Not sure if we went the right way but it wasn’t a bad way to spend a few hours of the day. Weather wasn’t too good. A fair amount of alcohol was consumed.
Showers were NOK10. The gift shop/reception could make change. Laundry was available, in the part of the accomodation across the road.