Tuesday – 2 July 2013 – Alta, Norway
Alta is the last Arctic stop of this cruise. At 70 degrees north latitude, this 170 year old town is remarkably vigorous. As usual in Norway, the town fathers gave high priority to building a ski jump.
We were lucky to arrive in sunshine (more or less) and the rain held off (more or less) for our two shore side activities. Any weather that doesn't require foul weather gear is considered "summer" 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Alta is located at the end of the Alta Fjord. Go figure.
We opted for the morning "Rock Art of Alta" excursion, essentially a narrated transfer to the Alta Museum, the access to the nearby UNESCO World Heritage petroglyph site. A 3 mile boardwalk passes by thirteen petroglyphs said to be as old as 6000 years. These were discovered by a couple of teenagers—why is it that all caves and petroglyphs are discovered by adolescents—who ventured out during the week of summer in 1972 (more or less).
The petroglyphs are really remarkable. Although most were enhanced for tourists' viewing convenience by ocher, a few of the rock drawings were left as they were found. They depict the usual hunting and fishing activities of the prehistoric hunter gatherers and later herders as pens are visible. There are fishing nets shown, boats looking like Viking ships (hey?) and even some pregnant moose. They even depicted the moose becoming pregnant. Really pretty cool: petroglyph naughty pictures. But best of all for us was that the boardwalk extended for quite a distance affording a nice hour plus long brisk hike through the woods and along the fjord.
We returned to the ship and had a quick lunch as the sky opened up with warm rain and considerable wind (the lovely apple display at the gang way became dislodged amusing the ship's security officer not at all), but the weather cleared up shortly after enough for us to venture to the downtown area via the ship's half hourly shuttle bus. We found downtown Alta—there are three towns in the area combined recently into one administrative district, no doubt so that they could buy more street lights and snow plows—to be quite nice. A wide avenue leads to the brand new titanium clad cathedral, and there's a huge indoor mall with every kind of store that one can find anywhere in the world, all of which were doing a vigorous business. We even spotted an Indian and a Chinese Restaurant, named Taj Mahal and Wing Wah, respectively. These Norwegians never miss a trick.
We sail at 4 pm for Kristiansund in the deep south of Norway. (We later found out there's also a town of Kristrianson further south. So our Kristiansund is usually written with an "N" after its name.) There, I hope to see both twilight (for an hour or so) and where the timber line way be as high as 500 feet MSL instead of at sea level. We will deplete our on-board credit with yet another tour called, "Atlantic Ocean Road & Kvernes Stave Church." I wonder what we will see on that excursion.
