I visited the European city where you can see orcas in the wild and flights there are £23
IT hadn’t been more than ten minutes since we left the harbour, but already I was prepared to call it quits.
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.
The village of Skjervøy had disappeared in the blizzard, with the horizon vanishing along with it.
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.
Mercifully I wasn’t in charge of the boat and Honsa, our guide for the day, was far less melodramatic about our predicament.
“There’s an island not far from here, let’s go over there and see what we can see,” he calmly suggested.
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 32-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.
I arrived at the shore of a fjord, having trekked through snow that was in places at least two feet deep, and saw a man breaking up huge sheets of frozen water, so that it wouldn’t prevent me from wading in, which at that point, was the last thing I wanted to do.
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.
It took me a few moments to fully trust the suit, but once I’d taken a few steps into the water, I was more than happy to recline, using a float as a pillow and just lie there, gazing at the majestic sights of North Norway.
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.
I felt like I was floating in the middle of a living Christmas card, one that makes you believe that the magic of the season, Santa, elves and Rudolph are all maybe real, after all.
In fact, Rudolph is pretty easy to come across, along with the rest of his sleigh-pulling sidekicks, with reindeer sledding and feeding experiences another of the many highlights of a trip to Tromso.
That’s how I found myself entering a pen full of them, with a bucket of pellets, attempting to curry favour in exchange for a festive photo opportunity.
Reindeer stew
I held out a handful of food and quickly made friends with several of the reindeer as they charged towards me, antlers lowered, ready to battle with one another in a bid to be the first to gobble up my snacks.
After that, I had the chance to sample some of them, with reindeer stew on offer in a teepee nearby, as we spent the evening eating and learning about the Sami people, a semi-nomadic group from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
I decided against having chunks of Dasher and Dancer in my soup and opted for the hearty lentil option instead.
The rest of the evening was spent staring skywards in the hope of a glimpse of the Northern Lights but, once again, they failed to make an appearance.
It was the second evening of my trip spent staring upwards hoping the aurora would appear, with a guide previously taking me on an eight-hour venture across the border into Finland in search of the elusive natural wonder.
Although it also couldn’t be seen then, sitting around a campfire with hot chocolate in the Finnish woods was still a wonderful way to spend a Friday evening.
For me, I had to settle for the lights that twinkle throughout the town centre, which are almost enough of a substitute, with Tromso, by some distance, one of the most picture-perfect winter destinations you could hope to visit.
GO: TROMSO
GETTING THERE: Wizz Air flies from Luton from £23 one way. See wizzair.com. Airport parking from £24.99. See holidayextras.com
STAYING THERE: Comfort Hotel Xpress, Tromso has rooms from £42per night. See strawberryhotels.com.
OUT & ABOUT: Whale Watching, from £160pp, see ArcticExplorers.no. Northern Lights tour from £116pp, see NorthernLight.Guide. Sami Reindeer Feeding and Northern Lights tour, from £105pp, see TromsoLapland.No. Arctic Floating from £109pp, see AuthenticNorth.No.