Travels With My Cat

Tipsy wanted to start this blog post with a little bit of history, because Tipsy was a present from our Aunt Aurora Pet to me (Tipsy’s Little Pet) about 30 years ago, and funnily enough, both Aunt Aurora Pet and me have the same birthdays.  Anyway, what Tipsy wanted to tell you was that auroras have always had a very special place in her heart, so she was super excited (jumping up and down) when planning our Lapland adventures, and made sure the aurora borealis was the first thing we tried to track down.

Now, if you’ve read our really old blog post from around 70 years ago* (*which is actually from 1999 – cats have a strange way of counting, I’m not sure why, they just do), then you’ll know that we were, eventually, lucky enough to track them down in Iceland.  They are notoriously hard to see – it has been estimated that only 2% of the world’s population has seen them – so while we were hopeful, we were pretty geared up for a no show.

We joined the Chasing Lights Mini Bus tour, hosted by the lovely David and Pawel and drove to Kvaløya – Whale Island, and camped by a beach.  There were quite a few other groups out too, but no light pollution at all.  And guess, what?  We stepped off the mini bus and looked up, and there were the lights overhead, forming a green arc – totally, absolutely, spectacularly amazing. 

As we we had struck green gold, our guides decided to set up a bonfire on the beach (the lights are so high up in the sky, that you see the same ones from anywhere down below) and we stayed there all night, enjoying soup, sipping hot chocolate, and toasting marshmallows,  marvelling at the heavenly show above.  The lights , which are never as bright as you see them in photos – the naked eye picking them up differently from how the cameras do, paled and brightened, but pretty much stayed out all night.  They even started dancing around, looking magnificent.  It was freezing cold – minus 20 degrees (the tour provided suits, as well as tripods and help setting up with the cameras) – and it was definitely worth it.

At the end of the evening, just as our guides decided to drive away and try one more spot to get the lights with a different background, we had to make an abrupt turnaround, as the green lights decided to be super, extra kind, and turn from their usual green – formed when the sun’s particles hit the oxygen high up in the atmosphere – to pink – not so common as the particles have to come further down and meet and react with nitrogen.  Thank you Northern Lights for this brilliant show stopper.

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PS. Sorry if the photos are a bit blurry and grainy – Tipsy was too excited – jumping up and down – to stand still for the long exposure photos!

Just to let you know, we’re not being sponsored by anyone (yet) to write this blog post.  We’ve only put in the clickable links so that’s it’s easier for you to find things. We’re nice like that ?