Our first full day here at the lodge started off with a delightful breakfast, a farewell to our new Hong Kong friends and a day ahead of not being sure what to do.
Michael, our host, organised for his neighbour to take us on a horse ride through the valley which was for mid-afternoon. In the morning, we had a nap (we were up late with the lights the previous night) and then went into Alta to get some cash and a coffee.
We arrived at the horse stables at 2pm and were greeted by a super nice family who have lived here for all their lives. The owner, Vigor, introduced us to his family and his horses – a mix of Fjord Horses (special breed of horses) and more typical horses we’d see at home. We got a full tour of the farm, where they do grains, sheep and a whole bunch of other stuff – was really, really cool to see true locals doing what they do.
So – horse riding. Imagine the movie City Slickers and that was pretty much us. Had difficulty just getting onto the bloody horses! The people were super nice though and didn’t make us feel silly – we had that covered!
Off we went for about 90 minutes through the valley, crossed a couple of streams and had a great history lesson from Vigor about how things have changed and how some things have stayed the same. He was an American car fanatic (he’s also a mechanic) and he was very interested when he learnt we were from the home town of Holden which he knew all about. We also spoke about the Lights experience from the night before and even Vigor said it was something highly unusual – he said in his 65 years of watching them, he’d only seen them that spectacular once before… so you know it was a good one when you hear something like that!
The horses were very docile, friendly beasts to us. Soph’s was a bit wilful and stopped to eat whatever grass she could get near, but there were zero issues and it was amazing to be out in the wilderness on the back of a horse. On the way back, we got into a canter in the fields which was absolutely hilarious as two city idiots tried to use Norwegian words to bring the horses back under control.
Just an amazing time and a huge highlight of the trip.
Back to the lodge for dinner and hopefully another Northern Lights show. I was out in the cold checking every 15 minutes and not seeing anything. After a great 3hr chat with Michael, we decided we’d just go and take photos of the stars. And what do you know… at 11:45pm out of nowhere we had another, possibly even more full-on spectacle. The great part is – it was just Soph & I and the lights. We tried for photos, but really it’s the memories that matter.
