The sea was swelling beneath our flimsy RIB dinghy, like giant rolling hills growing out of nowhere, before sliding us straight back down the other side. It felt like we were bobbing perilously in the middle of an endless grey ocean, completely alone, with no one or nothing around for miles.
The weather quickly subsided, our line of sight returned and along with it came the towering, unmistakable fins of a pod of orca whales. Giant black triangles emerged menacingly from the sea around us, gliding through the waves like knives through butter, followed by the rest of the creatures as they glanced at us from the surface, before arcing their backs and plunging back beneath the icy water to continue their hunt for herring. Seeing them was a truly spellbinding experience, and the culmination of my year wait to see orcas.
When I was three, my dad promised me an up close and personal meeting with one named Kandu at an aquarium in Canada, but she was too ill to greet us that day, leaving me disappointed and slightly obsessed with the animals. In recent years, I have travelled far and wide to try to spot them in their natural habitat, like a real-life Captain Ahab, searching high and low for my very own black and white whale.
It turns out that all I needed to do was head to Tromso in Norway, where the orca visit every winter to make the most of the plentiful fish supplies in the freezing waters off the surrounding islands. And you can join them in the sea, be it on a boat on a whale watching trip or, you can take a dip in among the chunks of ice, with an Arctic floating experience.
The latter may sound thoroughly unpleasant, but it turned out to be far more relaxing than I could ever have expected. However, I was soon fitted with a giant dry suit, under which I wore a furry Nordic onesie, which made me look like an astronaut and kept all the heat in, making sure that even in the zero-degree water, I was able to stay nice and toastie. I found myself surrounded by sky-scraping mountains, coated in pristine white snow, with stunning pine forests providing naturally festive displays as far as the eye could see.
