This morning, we woke up fairly rested after our night of glamping.  During the night, the dogs would occasionally bark and howl for a few minutes.  I don’t know what set them off or why they quieted fairly quickly.  They are so loud though that there was no way to miss them.  There are 100+ dogs on the property, and when one gets excited, they all do.  Each time they woke us up, we looked out to see if we could see the Lights again.

Our night was fine.  Even though the tipi was chilly, we were plenty warm under the covers.  I missed having the private en suite, but we did all right without it, too.  When the host was showing us our tipi, I asked her if it was safe for me to walk to the bathroom in the night by myself, and she assured me it was.  I guess the noise from dogs would keep any other critters away.  I felt perfectly safe.  Kinda odd to see other people out during the night though.  There was always someone outside looking for the Northern Lights, it seemed.   Clad in mostly all black, the dark figures walking slowly or standing still while looking skyward were a bit creepy.  I think it would be a completely different experience if the tipis were insulated well enough for plumbing to withstand the cold during winter so I understand why they are built the way they are.  The wall heater ran all night set on about 25 degrees Celsius. I could feel warm air coming out of the vent when I held my hand right by it, but I’m not sure it helped all that much.  The mattress pads had a four-hour limit before they cut off automatically.  I turned mine back on when I noticed it had turned off.  It didn’t take very long to warm up again.  Sleeping on the electric lines running through the pad was uncomfortable at first, but I got past that, too.  

We had a typical Norwegian buffet breakfast ready by 8:00.  Bread, cold cuts, cheese, yogurt, juice, coffee and tea were spread out.   A couple of items offered were new to me.  Fortunately, everything was labeled in English as well as Norwegian.  A caramel-colored, waxy block was labeled “brown cheese. ”  It was okay, but I wouldn’t go back for seconds.  Two tubes that looked like large toothpastes were labeled Majones and Kaviar. They squirted out mayonnaise and light pink, creamed caviar.  I’ve never seen caviar in that format.  I think they were meant to be toppings for the small pan of scrambled eggs on the buffet.  

After breakfast, we had time for another quick look around the property before the bus came to pick us up.  The ride back to the dock took fifteen minutes, and there was almost no wait to get on the tender.  We were back in time for me to do some laundry before lunch.  While we were standing in line for the tender, a small plane approached to land at Alta.  The airport is right by the dock.  The Island Princess is too tall to be able to dock since it would block the path of planes landing and taking off. 

This evening, we had a light dinner in the buffet before returning to the tender to go back into Alta.  This time the line to get on a tender was long with over 200 people going on the same excursion that we had booked — The Northern Lights Safari at Paesketun.  There were five full buses, and one of those buses was a double decker.  

Paesketun is a slate quarry during the day that has added on being a Northern Lights camp at night.  Unfortunately, the Lights did not cooperate tonight.  We did not see them while at the site, and we were not too impressed with the other parts of the excursion which included cake with coffee, a movie about slate mining/manufacturing in Alta, and a heated Lavvu tipi to warm up in.  There were too many people standing in the cold while waiting and milling about with no place to go.  It was a disappointing time, but one we booked for $169.95 each just to maximize our chances of seeing the Lights.