East Greenland Cruise - September 2006

If you'd like to just flick through the photos as a slideshow, click here

Day 5 to 7

For the next three days we continued to have perfect weather as we made our way further into the Scoresbysund fjord system, although it was very cold out on deck when the boat was moving. We were also fortunate enough to see the Northern Lights on four separate nights during our trip - these are pretty much impossible to photograph from a boat, but I've included the horribly blurry, noisy photos anyway, just because we saw them!

Here's a little confession - I've waited years to see the Northern Lights, and was so disappointed that I didn't see them in Finland last year, and yet....I didn't find them spectacular. They were interesting, but as far as being a spectacle went to be honest they just looked like wispy clouds with a green light shining on them. I would add that I seemed to be alone in this view, with everyone else oohing and aahing away. Maybe I built them up too much in my mind.  The second night we had some slightly more dramatic ones that had different colours in them, and those were closer to what I'd imagined, but still not enough to keep me outside in the cold for long.

The captain came out and we celebrated with champagne on deck when we reached our Northernmost point during these days sailing - 71 degrees north. The scenery was just spectacular - bleak and desolate, but beautiful.

The sunrises and sunsets were wonderful, and for a sunset/sunrise photo junkie like me this was a bit of a nightmare, as they went on for a very long time and I ended taking far too many photos. In one instance, I had 22 pretty much identical shots of the same sunrise. All up, I had around 4500 photos to review when I got back, and this still rather large collection on these pages represents either photos that I like on their own merit, or photos that show something interesting about the trip.