Wednesday – 26 June 2013 – Honningsvag (North Cape), Norway
The most northern point of mainland Europe is near the town of Honningsvag, says the tour descripton. Unfortunately, Honningsvag is on an island, not the mainland. No matter, after a very windy and rainy arrival, so much so that our ever present piper had to take shelter on the lee side of the ship, we took our first ship's excursion since we boarded Silver Cloud in Southampton. This tour was a last minute substitution for the tour we had booked before we left home. We were hoping for a much more adventurous tour consisting of a scenic drive to the fishing village of Gjesvaer and then a small boat amidst the off shore Stappan Islands to observe black-legged kittiwakes, puffins, razorbills, great cormorants , and of course common guillemots and European shags. I think these are birds.
Due to lack of interest by our ever adventurous fellow guests, the wildlife tour was cancelled and we had to settle for the excursion to the well know tourist trap of "North Cape". But we certainly wanted to get off the ship and see the North Cape Plateau scenery, plus we had been warned that the "best thing to do" if we stayed in Honningsvag was to visit the Shell gas station as it was smack on the 71st parallel. Truly an existential joy only.
So, off we went in one of the five tour buses (130 guests out of our total of 260 or so went on this tour and were awaiting the tour in the lobby even before the ship's gangway was up) to see "North Cape". The scenery was, let's say, extensive as well as stark. The spitting rain made viewing from the bus kind of difficult, and the tour guide felt it necessary to quiz each participant on their nationalities as she was quite fascinated with each mention of Britain, Canada, Australia, and the USA. She was even more excited that there were two couples from France. Of course, a tour guide who works year round in Honningsvag doesn't get out much.
A promised highlight of our featured tour was to stop at a "Sami Camp" on the way to the plateau. The camp consisted or four nice modern rectangular prefab houses, a guy dressed in native regalia, and an apparently hungry reindeer. The guide warned us that we could talk to the reindeer but not touch the man, or maybe it was the other way around.
After a half hour stop in the nearby gift shop hut (with a plastic Sami hat sculpture or maybe a wind blown garbage bag on top) full of fridge magnets and stuffed reindeer made in a factory in Finland, we headed out to the visitors' center at "North Cape". We watched a fifteen minute film that showed three seasons on the Plateau—the winter from mid November to mid January is pitch dark and therefore can not be filmed very well—and then we were served a hideous "sparkling wine to toast to the North Cape".
It should be noted that "North Cape", the visitor's center one and not the actual most northern point of Europe, was established when an all weather road was built on the Plateau in the 1970s. So they located the tourist site in the same manner as one looks for lost keys under the street lamp. I ran to the men's room to mark, at 71d 10m 21s latitude, my so far most northern point visited, at least one of my goals for this cruise. (And an immediate need after the long bus ride as the Sami camp had no facilities other than the gift shop.) We were given two hours to visit the 100 foot away monument to the most northern point of the European mainland (which as mentioned earlier isn't there) and browse the supermarket sized gift shop where one could buy stuffed reindeer wearing raincoats or hug the every present gnome. Ever there, someone beat me to it and was already hugging the gnome.
After venturing out in the wind and rain for the obligatory tourist shots at the various misplaced monuments (there were a number of them as it doesn't matter much when you're not at the place they "mark"), we ran back to the bus with the others 20 minutes before the appointed time (except for the couple that is always late back to the bus) to make the half hour drive, now in serious rain, back to the ship while listening to the guide talk about all the Nazi atrocities during WWII inflicted on the people of the Finmark Province of northern Norway. I was both appalled and made very sleepy, for which I felt guilty.
We had a quick lunch and then advanced our watches one hour at 3pm, making for an immediate tea time. We will lose another hour this evening as Russia, the first of three stops in that country, is four hours ahead of GMT, two hours later than Europe. The time zones are very close together at this latitude. Today's half day stop in Honningsvag was one of the shortest and longest I've ever taken for a number of reasons.
This evening is the "Venetian Society" reception where I will be singled out for my 592 days on Silversea and Barbara for reaching 250 days.
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