Tuesday, 8. November 2005, 12:52:01
As a team building exercise, the Symbian team here at Opera Software all got to go on a trip up north in Norway to
Tysfjord in Ofoten.
We left friday morning, and after a flight, some busses and some ferrys across some fjords we arrived at
Tysfjord Turistsenter at around six-seven-ish. We shortly thereafter had dinner (where I ate way too much) and spent the evening having drinks and a good time at the hotel.
Saturday morning we started off early and headed off to Camp Kenny, which was basically a little nature camp out by the sea, for some "survival training"; Out in the wilderness by a beach looking out on Lofoten he had set up a laplandish
lavo (native lap tent) where we all kept warm by the fire relaxing on raindeer skinrugs and nursed the slight hangovers from the night before with some more brewsky. A little closer to the water was a nice
axe throwing setup where I soon discoverd my natural talents, it felt strangely comfortable with a beer in one hand and a doublesided axe in the other. Some of the more adventurous of us actually jumped into the hottub set up right on the beach and even ventured into the sea for a few seconds before bustling back into the warm embrace of the tub. New to the whole thing, people struggled between putting on too little kindling resulting in a cool bath, and too much resulting in a near boil. Later we all went for a hike up to the nearest top where we got a nice 360 degree panoramic view of the fjords and Lofoten. Back at the hotel five hours later we again had dinner after some hours of work, but took it rather easy wanting to stay sharp for the next day's big event. We did catch lots of
Aurora Borealis that night, or more popularly called Northern Lights, stretching the entire night sky. They were a little undistiguished though and only sort of gray-ish green, but very cool nonetheless.
Sunday was the big day,
we were going out on the fjord to look for Orcas (also known as killer whales). We were split into two groups, the ones wanting to actually snorkle and get in the water with the whales and the ones who would rather stay on the boat. So after being lectured about the whales, their behaviours etc. we all got ready. I wanted to get in the water so I joined the snorkel crew to get set up; We were given
drysuits which were quite uncomfortable but kept you dry and warm. We then got on the boats, which were
zodiacs, and headed out on the fjord to find us some whales. This time of year the temparture lies around freezing, and unfortunately the weather turned quite quickly bringing in clouds and rain, making the sea rather unstable. Because of this we dind't spot as many whales as hoped, and never got a go-ahead to get in the water with the whales. We did see a whole buch of them up real close, including males, females and newborn - majestic creatures indeed! It is quite the feeling seeing a 1-2m dorsalfin pass only a few meters away and witnessing these magnificent giant dolphins gracefully swim by. The ride home took almost an hour, and with the rather rowdy sea it was quite the rollercoaster ride with a side dish of seaspray. Once back, and after a nice long warm shower we hung out and relaxed before some more work. Dinner was very good, raindeer meat again, and the evening ended with some drinks and some billiards.
The following day we had to get up at 0500 in order to make the busses and ferrys in time to catch our flight home, and when we arrived at Opera HQ around 1400 we were all quite exhausted.
All in all a very very cool trip, only thing which could have made it better would have to be better weather for the whale safari and actually getting in the water. There are more pictures in the
Opera Lofoten Trip photo album.
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