Narvik Polar Park

What I do appreciate about a trip that is not an expedition is that excursions leave in the morning. Our first excursion starts at 11:45 which is very civilized. We have selected the Polar Park. It is of course a bus ride, no zodiacs, the bus takes us through very, very small villages and of course we see snow and snow capped mountains. Our guide is particularly good and gives us a very good idea of how people have lived in this part of the world over the centuries.

We don't have much of an idea what to expect, Polar Park is like an open range zoo but in this case with only animals that live in the Arctic. Our guide is a young woman and is one of the keepers so she knows a lot about the animals and animal behavior. There is no guarantee we're going to see any of the animals that are in the park because they have a very large area in which they can roam. There are fences in part to protect us from the animals but also to protect the animals from each other. In order to entice the animals to come to the fence line so that we see them, she carries a bucket of raw meat.

In Norway it is illegal to take animals from the wild. This means only animals in the park have either always live there such as the reindeer or they have bought them from other zoos. They are not allowed, for example, to take animals that have been injured and rehabilitate them or to take animals abandoned by their mothers.

The first enclosure has lynxs cats in it but they are disinclined to come anywhere near us. She explains they have been well-fed and like most cats are probably off sleeping somewhere. Someone had brought in a dead reindeer and they had left that in the cage with the cats so there was quite a lot of food available. We see red deer, I suspect these are the ones that have gone feral at home, a moose, they have extraordinarily long legs and musk oxen. When we were on the ship in the Northwest passage, the guides regularly told us about musk oxen. I had no idea what they were talking about or even what or how to spell the words. We eventually saw them when we got to Alaska and they look like their close relative, very large, hairy goats. The park had several of them. The park also had a number of bears, one of which had been trained to wave at tourists, I suspect trained with food.

The animals that were most interesting included the wolverine. The bucket of meat came in very handy. The keeper threw small pieces of meat over the fence and this rather interesting and quite attractive creature would leap up in the air and onto the meat and quite close to us. We also heard the pack of wolves, beautiful creatures and the sounds they made were quite melodious. There were two arctic foxes curled up in the snow. Again reluctant to come very close However, they were hopeful of getting something to eat and walked to the fence. The keeper mentioned that they had been put on a diet. They'd put on a lot of weight over winter so they were extremely hopeful of getting food. On our way back, the keeper did manage to coax out the lynx and we were able to get a really good view. She threw meat so that he got stuck in the fence and the lynx had to jump up and grab it.

It was a fascinating walk and we really enjoyed it, it was very cold and by the end of the walk there was a small flurry of snow which became heavier. By the time we finished our lunch. It was a spectacular park.

The first night after arrival is usually a gala dinner. We gathered in the theater to be entertained by singers and musicians, the captain spoke and introduced key members of his crew. He is clearly someone who has a good sense of humor because he was telling jokes during his speech. Dinner as always included
Foie gras and fine wine.

As we are finishing our digestive at the end of the evening ready to head to bed there is an announcement of Northern lights. Back down to the cabin, rug up with our jacket and grab our cameras. We don't stand out very long but we do see the lights again.Read more