This was a great tour. I thought that a 14 hour tour would be exhausting but the driver was very informative.would do it all over again. And we did see the Arouca twice that night thanks again
Although we didn't see the northern lights, Jeff was and awesome guide/driver. He tried from every vantage point to see the lights, but they just weren't cooperating. The only down side to the tour was the windows in the van kept icing over. There surely has to be some kind of de-icer or something to prevent this or to deal with this during the drive. Sitting in the back of a van for 12 hours and not being able to see out, is not fun.
Our tour guide, David, was impressively knowledgeable about the wildlife, geography, and history of the land and overall was a really nice guy. We stopped at a really cool Yukon roadside station to get food and interact with some of the locals who were interesting and gave me a ride on their snowmobile! before continuing up to the Circle. We stopped to take pictures of the sunset and got an official Arctic Circle certificate afterward, and yes, we saw the Aurora! It wasn't as bright as we were hoping because the moon was nearly full, so I highly recommend doing this trip when it's a new moon or close to it. Check before you book, and check the weather too as clouds will obstruct the view. The silver lining was that we saw not only the green lights but the rarer pink and red ones too. So maybe it was a red lining? Also! Keep in mind, humans can only detect so much with the naked eye and the Aurora will look similar to how we see the Milky Way: Yellow-gray, somewhat pale. The photographs of bursting skies are only visible with long camera exposures the same way all those extra stars in astrophotography are only visible with cameras. This doesn't dampen the experience at all especially because you CAN see colors with the eye alone, but it's a good heads up for those expecting a saturated tie-dye sky.
I'd totally do this again. There's no such thing as seeing the Northern Lights too many times, especially over such a breathtaking landscape.