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We’ve seen cold before but never cold like this. We almost didn’t land in Tromso; with just thirty minutes to go the captain of our Norwegian Airlines flight from London announced that the snowstorm we were flying through ruled out a Tromso landing, and we were to divert to another Arctic town, Bardufoss. There we waited on board while arrangements were made for a fleet of buses to come and pick up the passengers for the estimated 2.5 hour overland journey on dark icy roads to Tromso. But then the weather lifted a little and we got the welcome news that a Tromso landing was on the cards after all. Machines came alongside the plane to thaw and spray off the accumulated ice and snow from our wings, then we took to the sodden skies again and 45 minutes later we were standing at the Tromso Airport Europcar desk to pick up the keys to our hire car.
Surprisingly, our car wasn’t under cover waiting for us but was outside in a minus 10 degree C snow-covered field through which we had to trudge and find our vehicle by clicking the key lock and watching for flashing tail lights. It was no good looking for number plates; they were all blanketed in snow. Eventually we saw some welcome flashing of lights, and Lee Tuan went to work scraping the snow off the windows while I loaded the cases and photographed the forlorn scene. Then we gingerly drove into town, getting used once again to driving on the wrong side of the road, this time on ice and snow.
Tromso. 350 km north of the Arctic Circle, Tromso was once a polar hunting outpost, and taking-off point for expeditions by the famous Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen. But we’d come not to hunt polar bears or walrus but hoping to see what draws thousands of tourists here every year; the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). But for this, clear skies are needed and the weather was looking anything but obliging.
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