Sunday, August 6 - Narvik, Norway

The ship arrived in Narvik at 7:00 a.m. It was one of the nicest days of the year, a beautiful, sunny 60 degrees but felt like 70 degrees.

Our first shore excursion was from 8:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., Journey to Polar Park. The Polar Park was in Hakstad, a one hour drive from Narvik. It was a beautiful drive, with good views of several fjords and the Lofoten Islands. It was close to Sweden. We took Highway 6 and passed Highway 10. Our tour was among the first to arrive. It was quiet when we arrived but busy when we left.

The Polar Park is not a zoo but a nature preserve with larger, natural pens for the animals. We did quite a lot of hiking on steep trails while there.

A river ran through it.

Among the animals we saw: Moose:

Arctic Foxes:

A Wolverine who climbed trees to obtain his food:

Bears, including an albino:

Wolves (with guide Emil):

Musk Oxen:

And Red Deer:

There are also Lynx and free range Reindeer (Caribou) at the Polar Park, but we didn't see those during our visit. We enjoyed hearing the wolves howl, enjoyed our guide Emil, and our German tour guide from whom Brock got a lot of information.

The bus ride back to Narvik featured more lovely scenery:

We got dropped off at the war museum but didn't go on that tour. Instead, we had lunch at the parking lot of a mall where food trucks were set up. Brock had Mexican and I had Thai. It was a fun atmosphere with lots of young people around.

After lunch, we hiked up the hill to ride the cable car (gondola) at the Narvikfjellet Ski Resort. We rode the gondola to the top, which gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the whole town. We loved it!

This is a map of the ski area:

This is an old gondola that someone in the neighborhood had on display:

Nuggets of information from our German tour guide:

• Camping in Norway is like camping in Australia; you can pull off anywhere safe and stay up to 3 days there as long as you're not on private property.

• It's best to ski in Narvik in late March.

• The population of Narvik is 14,000.

• Children generally leave for college in Tromso, population 70,000. This is a big population for being inside the arctic circle. Many of the children, once leaving, never return.

• One of the driving forces in Narvik is rich iron ore deposits, much like the iron range in Minnesota.

• A unique feature of Narvik is that their fjord doesn't freeze, even though it's inside the arctic circle. This means that the iron ore, in the form of tachonite (pellets) can be shipped year round. It's moved to the port by railway built in the late 1800's.

• The largest share (80%) (in ships carrying up to 300,000 tons) goes to China. The remaining ships in smaller containers to Europe via the Netherlands.