Aurora Borealis @ Norwegian Arctic - Dec'07

This is my experience...
a great journey and a lifetime unforgettable experience!!!

This journey gave me a new meaning for travel and for life itself...
and the reason to create this blog and share, with all of you, this thrilling adventure.

Manuel

In the beginning… many thoughts and lots of doubts!

written on the 12th November 2007
I take a look at my calendar and checked,… it’s really 12 November 2007,… it has been almost 2 months since I looked back, for what was the last years and realized I had to get alive, again, and with a new age stage to face upon!

The only particular note about this day, was the fact that I bought this new notebook, a travel notebook on which I intended to write my impressions and thoughts about my journey to be! A travel notebook to remember me of my adventures and misadventures! Would be my travel chronicles!!!

A journey scheduled to start about a month from this day on the 8^th December (actually on the evening of the 7^th but I’ll get to my target destination only in afternoon of the 8^th) and on which, I believed at this point, I would be all by myself, something that promise to be a journey in the journey itself!

Also the destination chosen, for this lonesome adventure, wasn’t much the kind of destination most people would even consider to go nearby at this time of year – a journey into the Norwegian Arctic in the middle of the polar night season!!!

I guess you have to be some kind of fool to consider this one hell of a great holiday! Well, you can call me crazy… and some did :-)

On the many invitations I made, to friends and work buddies, the best I could get was some maybes that soon went to can’t do it now, sorry!

Well, the plane’s tickets already booked and bought since late September, so that settles things quite easy, Tromsø, here I come!!!

Ah! And, what for, you might ask!

Only to see (or try to see) the Aurora Borealis – or Northern Lights as they call it in northern countries! Again, call me crazy… again, some did :-)

[Just a piece of advice, if you are planning to go this far north, and you don’t want to be taken by crazy, it’s easy… just say you are going to Santa’s homeland, everyone seam to consider this as a normal and reasonable explanation!!!]

Who said I'm going alone?

written on the 19th November 2007

It’s always the same, as soon you write it down, there’s always someone to contradict you! Like this! I just said I was going all alone! Well… it’s not true anymore! JV is also coming… good, I guess!!!

Yet, I already need to make some changes to my planning, which didn’t include sleeping at hotels in London (Stansted airport, a nightly stage on the way in and out of Tromso), a must for JV…

The more friends you got, the more you can achieve!

written on the 22th November 2007

I’ve been checking on internet (at the Tromsø University webcams), almost everyday for the past few weeks, how’s the weather and sunlight up there. This is just a glimpse of Tromsø, but enough to see that it snowed last night :-)

That’s good news for someone that has scheduled and booked a Dogsled activity!!!

Also today arrived a new photo lens for FS! What has this got to do with this?! Well, he’s the friend that is lending me the photo equipment needed to catch some nice pictures, in case Aurora decides to show up, something that can’t be done with my compact photo camera! Apart from this he also bought this new lens (sooner then he had planned), so I could take it with me - this lens reduces the time needed for night shots, which is of greatest importance when you are trying to catch some moving subject, something that the lenses he had couldn’t do for the same wide-angle view!

That’s why I titled this one “the more friends you got, the more you can achieve!” – I know that someone already must have said this. It’s always like that, when I think I made a new sentence :-) - up to you to tell who did it this time!!!

Now we are three!

written on the 25th November 2007

Sunday afternoon. The phone rings, it’s JV! His voice sounded a little compromised, like there’s something bothering him! He wanna know how was some bookings that I already told him was done, so I started to worry and want to know what was that all about!

After some hesitations and excuses he ends up asking if I could allow his father to join us!!! Well, I didn’t quite understand the reason of all that hesitation to say that, till he told me his father was 74 years old! Then I understand why he was so cautious about :-)

Like I told him, he was his father and was going with his son and they where both adults!!! Which means: I decline any responsibility on both :-D

Anyway, I started this quest inviting everybody, so didn’t have any problem if someone else wanted to join us. Also if someone at 74, really, wants to go to the arctic (not just “would like to…”), in the middle of December, that someone doesn’t seem that old to me and is most welcome!!!

JV tells me his father was a marathon runner till 5 years ago, so I guess he must be in good physical conditions. Also that his father was more open-minded than the son and this I’ve got to see :-D