We are at the dock in Honningsvagg, Norway at 7am as scheduled. The temperature is 46.8 degrees Fahrenheit and we are at 70.59 degrees North latitude. As we had been told in Hammerfest, there is disagreement as to which was the farthest north town in the world – Hammerfest or Honningsvaag. The dispute turned on the definition of “town.” For Cathy and Steve, Honningsvagg wins out, even though they only have 2,484 residents. And, for Steve, they have better souvenirs claiming their status. More on that below.
We have breakfast in the GDR, and Janos (pronounced Yahnos), one of the people acting as maître d this morning, types our stateroom number into the computer. He deadpans: “It shows you are no longer on the ship.” We go: “What?” He responds: “Yes, our records show you left the ship yesterday … on Lifeboat Number 6.” That is a great and fun way to start the day, and is an indication of how comfortable the crew is dealing with us guests. It’s one of the reasons we love Oceania so much.
Our excursion today is Crab Safari and Ice Bar. It will last four hours and is categorized as the highest level of activity. The description of the tour includes these sentences: 1) “Your comfortable and approved flotation suit will protect you against low temperatures, and serve as a body-sized life jacket at the same time.” 2)“Participants should be in good physical condition and anyone under the influence of alcohol or drugs will not be allowed on the tour.” And 3) “Each guest must sign a waiver form before they are allowed to participate in the tour.” No other tours we have taken have these rules, and Cathy has been wondering for days how the heck Steve ever talked her into such a thing. But here we are.
The adventure starts at 9:45. We exit Nauticaand cross the dock. Our ship looks huge in the small town. We are escorted into the basement locker room of 71 Degrees Nord Arctic Adventures to receive and don our flotation suits and life vests. We go back outside and wait for the safety lecture, and chat with our friends Jay and Diane from Kentucky and Norm and Kay from West Chester PA. Already it is a fun day and Cathy has lost the jitters she had.
Basically, what will happen is this: we will be taken by deep-sea raft from the center of Honningsvagg to a small village about five miles away by water. We will have a crab feast, get back in the boats and head back at high speed to the town. There’s much more to it than that, of course, so here are the details.
We head for the dock to board. These deep-sea rafts are incredible. They are indeed inflatable rafts, but each of the two rafts can seat 12 people and is powered by two 300-hp outboard engines. You actually straddle the seats – one leg on either side – and have two handles in front of you to hold on to. Each boat has two or three big Norwegian guys there to drive and handle the traps, so we are in good hands. We board carefully and leave the dock around 10:15, and it takes about twenty minutes to reach our destination.
Our boats motor in tandem, and each boat pulls up to a huge crab trap. It takes two guys to pull the trap up over the side of our boat, and there are plenty of crabs in it. They pick out a half dozen and drop the trap – still pretty full of crabs – back into the water. They show us the crabs they have caught so we can take photos. Then they take us for a short trip to the dock. This town is very small and very peaceful and quiet and beautiful. Wild flowers everywhere and red houses on the water.
The two boats and their crews leave for town to pick up another group, so another guide will take over. Her name is Erica, and she is as nice as can be – and gorgeous as well. First she takes our six crabs, turns them over and lays them on a table. She proceeds to describe them in detail, and shows us their various parts. She really teaches us a lot about these animals in a short time. Cathy jokes that the designers for all the Alien movies spent some time with these crabs laid on their backs.
Then she gets down to business. Unlike lobsters, king crabs are killed first before cooking. This is just as well, because the next step is to cut them up, which she expertly does, putting the parts of the six crabs in a huge plastic bin. Her work is just beginning. A young man joins her and they proceed to cut the pieces up further using scissors. They cut the claws up lengthwise so that we can get at the meat without having to break open the claws ourselves.
In the meantime, a small herd of reindeer are spotted at the top of a hill across the way. In the meantime, the preparation process is continuing, and it takes a good twenty minutes as all of us are gathered around listening to Erica describe what she is doing. There is plenty of time for questions, and soon we are asking about them.
Turns out that the young man is her younger 15-year old brother. The kid must be 6’ 1” at least, so we are shocked to learn his age. His career goal is, after completing high school, to take a 3-year apprenticeship at a fish farm to learn the aquaculture business, which is growing exponentially in Norway. There is a very lucrative market for king crab especially, and it is shipped all around the world, much of it to Asia, so he has made a good career choice, to be sure. Our tour brochure tells us that King Crab was introduced to the Barents Sea in the 1960s by Russian scientists. Because they found the environment so inviting, the King Crab is possibly an environmental concern at this point. There are millions of them, so harvesting is now allowed and licensed. If anyone can deal with this overabundance, it would be the Norwegians.
Erica is planning on becoming a teacher. She is 19 and will be entering university in the fall for a five-year course of study. In typical brother-sister fashion, her brother, who is named Isak Nikolai Anderson (he shows me his name on his iPhone when I ask him), kids that he will already be earning a living while she still has three years of school to finish. She gently fires back that she will be living in a nice warm town and will have two months off in the summer each year. They are very, very nice young people. Their parents must be proud.
The next step, of course, is cooking the crab. For that, we all march into a Lavvo Camp, which is a Sami camp (looks identical to a Native American teepee) with an open fire in the middle of the tent, around which we all sit. The fire smells wonderful. Erica is back doing all the work. The large pot of water is suspended over a roaring fire of birch logs. She continues putting the crab pieces in the boiling water while she explains the process. Essentially, the crab cooks for fifteen minutes. It then is rinsed in clean sea water to cool the crab pieces down.
She and one of the boat crew guides take the pot of boiling water full of crab down, and all of us cringe at this difficult maneuver over a roaring fire. (We ask ourselves: why isn’t Isak doing this!? Whatever). In a few minutes, she returns with the pot full of crab. She and her brother (yes, Isak has reappeared) distribute beautiful wooden boards for us to put on our laps. She proceeds to set up the twenty-four meals on paper plates. There will be crab legs, a crab body, some delicious Sami bread, with yummy, yummy mayonnaise and a lemon wedge for seasoning on each plate. Food is passed out and we dig in.
Seconds are passed around, and another pot of water is started for the next group (We sense that this family-owned and operated business is a gold mine, as Isak has told us that 100 cruise ships a year make it up to Honningsvaag). Once we finish, we waddle out of the Lavvo Camp stuffed. We wander around taking photos of this idyllic scenery for a few minutes while waiting for our boats to return.
We bid Erica and Isak good bye and wish them the best. What an experience this has been. Erica will make a great teacher, and her brother will have a fine career as well. Listening to these two young people was a real treat that we didn’t expect, and it added a lot to our experience.
We board the rafts for the trip back. Our guides ask us if we want to have some fun with the rafts, and we all say YES! YES! … Well, maybe not Cathy. So off we go. The water is very calm, so we get up to at least 60-65 miles per hour. They take sharp turns, chase each other, and we generally hang on for dear life enjoying it like children … all except Cathy. Now we understand the reason for the special seats built like saddles. An ordinary seat would never work on the sharp, sharp turns we take. We’d end up in the water for sure.
Halfway back, we come to a sudden stop and pull close to the shore. One of the crew on the other boat has spotted a sea eagle. Then we see another – and another. They are smaller than bald eagles, but they are beautiful. One of them spends about ten minutes flying around close to the water – cruising for lunch, we figure. Steve tries to get a photo but only has his iPhone (didn’t want to take a chance with the regular camera on a boat – good thing) and that doesn’t really work out. Nevertheless, they are fun to watch.
Then we get going again – back up to 65 mph, with more turns. We play around in Honningsvaag harbor taking 90-degree turns, and then return to the dock. What a blast! Here’s what Cathy thought: [I wasn’t scared but I didn’t like it. If we had had different seats I would have been terrified].
We shed the flotation suit and life vest and the crew brings us to the finish of our tour: a visit to the Artico Ice Bar, a house made completely of ice, with all the tables and seats and bar glasses made of ice as well. It’s put together each year from a couple of hundred blocks of ice cut during the winter. Before we enter, we are given an insulated poncho so we can feel comfortable (sort of) in the 23-degree temperature sitting on a block of ice (which is covered with a reindeer hide). We are each given a voucher for one drink, which consists of one of six different flavors of a syrupy drink. Everybody wanders around taking photos of the place and each other, and then it’s out the door because it really is freezing in there. It was an interesting experience nonetheless.
We have all been invited to take our ice glasses outside, make a wish, and toss them over our shoulder into the sea for good luck. After that ritual, we march back into the attached souvenir shop. Cathy and I find a couple of adorable things for our grandchildren, then head for another shop we saw when we left the ship this morning.
Here we hit the pay dirt. As mentioned in previous posts, Steve brought only one sweatshirt to wear, and it is high time it was laundered. The Russian sweater purchased a couple of days ago has helped the cause, but he has really wanted a sweatshirt that says something about the Arctic Circle. Well, here it is. It says “Nordkapp 71 10’21.” Nordkapp is the name of the municipality in Finnmark county, and the numbers are the latitude of the tip of the North Cape, the most northernmost tip of the European continent. His search is over! That and a cool t-shirt for one of our grandchildren, and our shopping for ourselves for this trip may be complete.
We board Nautica again, and have an amusing moment as we do so. We are showing the local security guard our ship id card, and two people walk up behind us. They flash him their card, but it turns out that they are on the MS Albatros, a ship at the pier opposite ours that is owned by a German travel company. He points to the other ship and says to us: “You have to keep those Germans on their ship.” He adds: “You know what they say. If a German asks you for a cigarette, whatever you do, don’t give him a match.” Given the treatment that Norway received from the Germans in WWII, we really can’t blame any Norwegian for having such an attitude. Sorry.
Sail away is at 5:00pm, and we sit on our balcony overlooking more incredible scenery as the ship leaves the harbor. Cruise Director Shawn has thoughtfully let us know the exact time when we will pass North Cape, which is 6:45pm. Hunger has still not returned due to our crab feast of a few hours ago, so we wait so Steve can take a few photos of that 1,000-foot cliff on our left which is the North Cape. The north pole is 1,306 miles to our right.
