As a part of our honeymoon, we chose to travel to Svalbard, an norwegian island that is not connected to the main land itself. It’s also not that far from the north pole. From late november to mid-february its completely dark outside all day long. Not even a single hour of daylight. That’s one of the reason I wanted to experience this place for myself. During our visit the temperature was around –18 to -20 °C, which is a bit colder than what we are used to during the winter. With that being said, a lot of clothes was needed to endure the cold. But to be honest it really wasn’t that bad.
We arrived on the 27th January, after spending 8-9 hours on a train, then another 3 on a plane. When we got to the hotel it was around 1 pm. Neither of us had gotten any sleep, and when we arrived we had been awake for 24 + hours (my husband longer than me). So we just went right to bed… NOT. You see, we had plans for the day, a trip that we had already payed for, and it started at 3 PM. We took like a 10 minute nap, and then we got dressed and went outside. Because of the lack of sleep, we had hoped for a relaxing adventure, and that we didn’t have to walk too much. Well… it didn’t take us long to discover that it wouldn’t be that easy. The walk we hard and long. We had to go up a mountain that was partly covered in “soft” snow, which made it a lot harder to walk. Half way there we almost wanted to give up. Neither of us was in good shape, and the lack of sleep on top of that really made it feel like torture. But we didn’t give up, not even when the guide told us we had almost walked half the way, and we barely had any energy left at all. It was one of those moments when we really got a chance to surprise our self by finding a strength within us we from time to time forget we have. We humans are a lot stronger than we think. The northern lights also showed itself for us, which was nice, but I wasn’t too impressed with it to be honest.After going through hell, and surviving, we got to our destination: The ice cave, made by nature itself. We went in through a hole in the ground (on top of the mountain). The first thing we discovered was how warm it was inside. It kinda felt like summer! The cave was truly beautiful, and it was a wonderful reward after what we had put our self through. It was worth it! (Pictures below). When we had seen the cave, we went outside again, and started to walk down the mountain. It took no more than 20-30 minutes to go down, and felt like no effort at all. Going down is always easier (unless you got bad knees, I guess).
