Travels with rarecat: Last stops before the Arctic

Before Tromso, our last stop before heading to Svalbad in the Arctic, we had a wonderful nature day in the Sundsvollsundet Nature Reserve on the island of Helloya. There was a large colony of kittiwakes nesting on the cliffs in addition to guillemots, cormorants and gulls - lots of mating and nest building activity with the kittiwakes, allowing for some interesting action shots. There were also lots of pretty anemones and sea urchins just at the water line with some extraordinarily beautiful rock formations.

The rock formations are incredibly coloured!

Such a pretty sea urchin!

The mountain backdrop was equally stunning

Courtship

Mating

Not sure if this was aggression or passion

This looked like squabbling

Flying back with nesting material

We spent the afternoon spotting Sperm Whales in Bleiks Canyon, a deep sea canyon known to be the haunt of Sperm Whales. There were at least four or five whales and I was able to catch a few whale tails - it was quite an exhilarating experience, holding our breaths waiting for the whale to blow several times before diving and showing its tail then madly clicking away! The Sperm Whale is new to me - it is the largest of the toothed whales and is the second deepest diving mammal. It has a round dorsal fin and a blow hole on the left side of its head so the blow is never straight up.

Sperm Whale

The day we arrived in Tromso, it was foggy and wet - this was actually the first day of bad weather so we were not complaining. The Arctic Alpine Botanical Garden in the rain was still pretty and in fact water drops on the flowers added to the shots. This is an unusual Botanical Garden in that it is the world's northernmost botanic garden. It was surprising to find so many flowering varieties and of course the tulips were still blooming in June. The garden focuses on plants from the Polar regions or high mountains which have difficulty surviving in the warmer climate where most botanical gardens are located.

Outstanding rock gardens in the Arctic Alpine Botanical Garden

We visited the Polar Museum, housed in a stunning building. The Tromso waterfront, which we could see from the museum, was actually quite pretty in the fog.

Polar Museum

Tromso in the fog

We took a cable car ride up to the top of the mountain but was fogged in - the view was better on the way up than up on the mountain. We then visited the famous Arctic Cathedral, but there was a wedding there and we could not get in to see the beautiful triangular stained glass window inside. It was not our lucky day. But the Tromso waterfront had some interesting buildings and the old town was quite picturesque. We were keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would improve as we head north across the Barents Sea to Svalbad.

Tromso from the cable car

All we could see up at the mountain top - one group from the ship was actually hiking in the fog, until they found they couldn't go any further up and had to turn back.