Lofoten – Part III

Day 2: Diwali Evening @ Hamnoy

Luck STRIKED AGAIN! Yes! After hardly an hour at Hamnøy, nature started its Diwali celebration. I noticed it first after I saw that the Kp level prediction looked good for the evening. Even though yr predicted cloudy conditions, the sky was clear in real. Yr.no is the most commonly used weather prediction site / app in Norway. As the receptionist at Eliassen Rorbuer warned me over phone, when it comes to Lofoten, the weather can change very quickly making it quite unpredictable, especially during that time of the year.

Without wasting that opportunity, we first took a family picture. I wasn’t really happy with the family photos that we took last evening.

Undoubtedly, that evening was the longest and THE BEST of Aurora that I have seen! Clear sky and strong, beautiful show of Aurora Borealis. We even managed to see purple coloured lights. At some instance I had to increase the camera shutter speed from 15-20 seconds to 4-6 seconds, since the images started getting over exposed. The evening was cold and windy and I wasn’t appropriately dressed. I was so engaged and lost in northern lights and photography that I put on some warmer layers and gloves when my wife brought those to me, after an hour or so. By that time, I remember that I was partly frozen and shivering. Sharing few of my favourite pics:

We met several tourists who have been staying in the area for several nights without any success of sighting northern lights. One couple from Thailand was very happy since that was their last night in Norway and they didn’t have to return disappointed.

I stayed outdoors right from almost 1830 to 2300 hrs, until the show was finished. I seriously doubt if we’ll ever again celebrate a Diwali like this, watching Nature’s environment friendly fireworks!! 😀

Day 3: Hamnøy

We had no ‘plans’ for those two days other than relaxing and a complete free and easy visit of the area. Kids also could enjoy the outdoors. Hamnøy and the mountains around were extremely beautiful, as seen in postcards or even better! There is a view point on E10 (a bridge) towards the cottages and the mountains. That is where all those beautiful pictures that we saw of Hamnøy on google search results, were taken from! I also used that opportunity to click as many as I please.

Later in the evening, I returned to same spot hoping for one more lucky night. The weather was quite bad since afternoon! Strong wind (15m/s) was blowing straight into the lens with a bit of snow at times. Not able to withstand the harsh weather, my father-in-law and brother-in-law who accompanied me, returned to our Rorbu after a while. Without losing hope, I waited for couple of hours and in between, when it stopped snowing, I removed the lens cover and tried taking few shots. I literally had to hang on to my tripod to keep it steady, because of the wind. I thought about what we had laughed about earlier that day, last two days we were lucky with northern lights and unlucky with the flat tyres. Since we didn’t experience any more flat tyres, most probably, the chances of seeing northern lights would also be bad.

Day 4: Hamnøy, Reine and Å

When we woke up that morning, we noticed that the mountains had turned white, with its first coat of snow from last night. The whole area suddenly appeared brighter.

We spent the day mostly in Hamnøy and a drive to the southernmost point of Lofoten, about 12 kms away. A village named using a single-alphabet, Å is a quiet, little fishing village with a museum and couple of other tourist attractions. We also stopped at few other tourist spots that we found attractive on the way, like famous view point in Reine. We couldn’t do any hikes to the mountains since the weather wasn’t favourable.

Day 5: Return from Lofoten

With lots of good memories and content, we checked-out from the Rorbu and started from the bright and sunny Hamnøy by 10.30 am. Our return flight from Evenes to Oslo was at 1930. Google maps predicted 5 hours for the drive. We still had couple of hours for some sight seeing on the drive back to the airport, we thought. When we reached our first stop, Ramberg beach [#2 in map], the weather changed suddenly and started raining. Without spending more time in Ramberg, we drove to the next destination Nusfjord [#3 in map].

Like A, Nusfjord is a very popular and historic fishing village of Lofoten. It wasn’t raining when we arrived in Nusfjord. After walking around the harbour area, we took a coffee break. That stop at Nusfjord ended up being a lot more longer than anticipated, which made us skip the visit to Lofoten viking museum [#4 in map].

We reached Svolvaer [#5 in map] by 3 pm and had a late lunch from Peppes Pizza. The waffles and coffee from Nusfjord had kept us full until then. By 3.45 pm we were all back in the van and ready for the last 160 kms to reach the airport. When others got to know that we would reach airport only by 1815, I could sense a bit of panic. In India, typically, you check-in minimum 2 hours before the flight time and now we would have only almost an hour. I tried to console them with the fact that, in Norway, for domestic flights, the check-in counter would be closed only 30 minutes before departure time. It didn’t help too much, I thought.

The last 100 kms of the drive gave us all sorts of driving experiences. As we were passing through different terrains and altitudes, we got to experience heavy rain, sleet, snow, icy and slippery roads and even saw cars stuck in snow and ice. Trucks coming from the airport direction were using tyre chains. This was when I really thanked GOD for getting us a better all wheel drive vehicle. It was absolute silence inside the vehicle, probably because of the driving conditions some of us were experiencing for the first time. It was absolutely dark outside with the van headlights being the only source of light. Snow or sleet was the only thing visible through the windscreen and I was driving at ~80 kmph. We could feel the car drifting off at turns due to ice and snow on the road. No further explanation needed for the silence. By God’s grace, we safely reached the airport before the check-in counter closed. The pulse rate normalized only after we took our seats on the return flight. The drive is also something I would remember for long time.

By 11 PM, we were back at home in Kongsberg after another memorable and adventurous holiday trip. Most of us stayed awake until almost 4 am celebrating and talking about the successful trip; something we will remember forever!!

Later that week, I received an email apology from Europcar for the trouble we faced renting their vehicle. They had waived off the road side assistance charges, even though flat tyres are not covered by rental companies unless extra rental insurace is bought. In addition, they gave a discount of 20% on the total rental charges. Thank you Europcar for the support and kind gesture!!