Whenever someone says that they are going on a “bucket list” trip or in fact a “once in a lifetime” trip, I have always been so enthusiastic and wanted to hear all about it. When it is you doing it yourself, everyone seems to be jealous and wanting to do the same, but in all honesty it never works out exactly as you planned. Well at least not in my case.
I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights. In fact, it was at the top of my list of things to do, but I also wanted to go dog sledding, sleep in a ice hotel (or at least see one up close) and swim in freezing cold arctic water (this changed the older I got mind you).
So I decided to go on a cruise up the coast of Norway (with five other people). The fact that the trip started out with a little girl throwing up in the bus on the way to the plane (and they wouldn’t open the doors because the plane wasn’t ready), should have been an indication of what was to come.
I don’t really have a problem with motion sickness, so I thought that the trip on the boat would be fine. Not realising that pretty much every night there would be one hell of a storm which caused a washing machine affect on the boat. I lay awake every night thinking that we would just need one iceberg to end up like the Titanic. I couldn’t stand being trapped in my little room, so spent most of my time out on deck (even in the minus temperatures) sitting next to the heater. It was also best to have air on my face when I was feeling so nauseous all the time. At least I hardly ever missed a meal, unlike my travel companions who were feeding the fish over the side of the boat and some were using those lovely airplane sickness bags you get.
One night, it was particularly bad and I watched as the boat rocked up and down so much that the table next to us lost their bottle of wine to the floor and tried to catch it on the way down, landing just next to the huge pile of glass the bottle had become.
Points to my mom. She drank wine every night (even though it was the most expensive wine ever – think R200 per glass), I couldn’t be asked. It was enough that I actually made it to dinner every night and the food was absolutely amazing, so I couldn’t miss out (even if I was nauseous).
With all the motion sickness going on, we still tried to go out on deck every night to see if we could catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. This actually happened on a night we were getting off the boat for a midnight concert, but it only lasted about 2 minutes and by the time Luch made it out the room, they had already disappeared. I keep saying to people at least we saw them, but I would have killed to see them for at least half an hour.
That being said, even though the holiday wasn’t exactly what I expected and I couldn’t drink (because of the nausea and the expense), I still had fun doing the excursions. Especially the dog sledding. I have never seen dogs more excited to run in my life. We also got to go on a reindeer sleigh, try our hand at ice fishing (no one caught anything), visit an ice gallery and go to an Arctic Cathedral for a midnight concert.
Next time though, I would go more inland and spend a good month or two searching for the lights and I definitely wouldn’t go on a boat in winter again. Lesson learned. Just remember never to put too much pressure on a holiday, because then any small thing will just disappoint you. As Luch always says, “don’t expect anything and you’ll be nicely surprised”.
