January 9 – Ørnes and Bodø

At about 7:40am we crossed the Arctic Circle at 66⁰33’49.3” north of the equator.  The arctic circle is the southernmost latitude at which, on the winter solstice (shortest day of the year), the sun will not rise all day (and on the summer solstice it will not set).  How interesting.   

The route into Ørnes took us through a number of islands and it was beautiful.  The staff said it was one of the most beautiful parts of the cruise…and they are probably right.  Prettiest so far anyway.

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Video of route to Ornes
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Video 2 of route to Ornes
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Ørnes

Some boat houses along the coastline.

We had only a very short stop here (postal drop) and we were back on our way. 

Mid-day they had a celebration for those who had crossed above the Arctic Circle for the first time (we have crossed it a couple of times before).  The celebrants had a large scoop of ice dumped down the back of their shirts.  Lots of laughs by all.

More cruising to our next stop.

We arrived in Bodø bit after 1:00pm.  The sun was already going down.  We boarded our bus where we had a short tour of some of Bodø…

before heading out of town for our visit to Saltraumen.  

Saltraumen is one of the strongest tidal current in the world.  This creates a maelstrom (powerful whirlpools) in the narrow channel of water between the outer Saltfjorden and the large Skjerstad Fjord.  400 million cubic meters of water 110 billion US gallons) flow through here in about six hours.  The whirlpools can be up to 33 feet across and 16 feet deep when the current is at its strongest.  The height difference between the two bodies of water is about 3.3 feet.

We were there when it was not at the maximum so we saw only the very strong current and lots of mixing and flowing of the water but no big whirlpool 

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Video of Saltraumen
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By the time we left (at 2:30) it was getting pretty dark.  Not long after we arrived the boat headed off again to the next mail stop. 

The afternoon was spent on photos, attending a lecture and working on our cameras to try to get them set up for photographing the Northern Lights.  Hopefully there will be some to photograph.   

On the Hurtigruten...

What excitement.  Tonight we had some pretty good Northern Lights.