A Great Day and the Night in the Lighthouse

It was a great vacation in Norway, but one day was just a little bit better than the rest….

We started the day by having breakfast in the sun looking at the beautiful waterfall just next to the camping. J made his famous müsli filled with fresh fruit. My favorite breakfast!

We spent the rest of the morning at Geiranger fiorden, chilling; having a beer in the sun and relaxing next to the water, looking at all the boats.

Then we bought a nice picnic lunch, with salmon, shrimps and fresh bread and ate it next to a frozen lake. It is a bit special to sit outside in the sun and eat - looking at snow and ice. That can’t be denied.

In the afternoon we drove to the lighthouse which we had booked for one night. As always the drive in Norway was an experience of its own. We had beautiful views the whole way.

The lighthouse is called Kråkenes and is almost the most western point of Norway. You can read more about it here: http://www.krakenesfyr.no/. We stayed in the bridal suite, which is the whole third floor of the lighthouse. We had a living room, a diner room, a small kitchenette, bathroom and a bedroom with a round bed. :-)

It was a fantastic place with a sea view from each window in the lighthouse. Outside the diner room and the bathroom you could see the actual light of the light house. So cool! It started to shine at sun set (and what a beautiful sunset it was) around 11.30 pm, about the same time as we started to eat our dinner (yes - that is late for a dinner, but with all the light it feels totally natural). About the same time our dinner guest arrived – Mr Seagull. He was just sitting there posing in the light from the lighthouse.

The dinner was equally amazing, consisting of fresh shrimps, lamb fillet and chocolate brownie as dessert. Of course all served with good wine. We ended up eating dinner until 02.00 am. It was a fantastic way of spending the night. The view kept changing with the light and we just sat there and enjoyed the scenery.

So if you combine great weather, fantastic food and amazing views – you end up with GREAT day and Night.

Driving in Norway

After a couple of weeks of travelling in Norway we finally got the hang of it. First - it is a very nice experience. The drives between the different points are not only a drive – they are pure sightseeing.

The view from the car window is constantly changing. We can see (and you can see below):

·         Water of different kinds – plenty of waterfalls (sometimes we see 5-6 waterfalls at one place), rivers, fiords and lakes. One more amazing and the other. Some of them even with ice (at the higher altitudes). We have passed several rivers that are good for games like rafting and others that fit for just normal kayaking. But all very, very beautiful.

·         Mountains, mountains and mountains. Some with green trees or grass, some pure rocks and some with snow. Great places for both skiing and hiking.

·         Tunnels, tunnels and tunnels (they must be one of the best nations in the world to build tunnels) – maybe not so interesting to see, but it is part of the charm. They can be quite exciting since some of them are pitch black.

·         Beautiful green fields and forests.

·         Plenty of really, really cutes houses.

BUT…….

Driving 50 km in Norway can take anything between 1-4 hours. Not only are all the roads curvy and narrow, so it is hard to double if you end up behind slow moving vehicles. It is also hard to keep a “Swedish” average speed of 80-90 km/hour; you drive more an average of 50 km/hour. But it doesn’t stop there. Norwegians know how to build tunnels, that is for sure, but not bridges. So for many of the MAIN roads you have to use ferries. All is well if you drive in the middle of the day, since they ran quite frequently, but already around 6 pm they start to run evening traffic, which means one ferry every 30 min or hour. So if you miss one ferry you might end up waiting for whole hour. We made that mistake a few times and ended up spending most of the evening on the road instead of enjoying ourselves on some nice place.

So we have decided that for our next trip to Norway we will choose 2-4 places we want to visit and then stay in that surround for some days. Then we will enjoy our trip even more.

Hiking in the snow storm

One morning J had the idea that we should hike to Norway’s highest situated hut, at 2038 m. This is a GREAT idea in most situations. But at that moment I didn’t feel that it was the world’s best idea. The reasons for this being:

·         We would start the hike in the late afternoon (4.30) and not like I prefer – start in the morning. Normally it would not even be possible, due to the lack of light, to start so late. But that is of no concern so far up in Norway since it is light almost around the clock. But still – it is a bit late to start a hike. The hike was expected to take 4 hours in “normal” conditions.  

·         It is 1200 altitude meters hike, which is in most cases regarded to be a VERY tough hike. To start a TOUGH hike in the late afternoon is NOT my favorite thing to do.

·         We were informed that it was a lot of snow on the top which would make it hard to walk – you sink through the snow to your thighs.

·         We were not fully prepared. We hadn’t bought any snacks and/or light food to bring along to the hut.

·         The weather didn’t look the best.

·         We weren’t sure that the hut was open. It was supposed to be, but when we called the phone number, the phone was turned off. There was a risk that we had to hike directly back down.

But J can be pretty convincing and seldom takes NO for an answer. I know this after 17 years as friends. So off we went.

It started out quite OK, but after only 1,5 hours hike we realized that is was not going to be an easy hike - It was sometime very hard to find the track, since it was hidden in the snow.

J on the way up, before the bad weather

View on the way up

Then it became misty and started to rain. As a hiker that is what you are prepared for, but when you already have things working against you it is not so easy to take. To not see where you are, not see where you are going and hike in wet rain clothes all adds up to a rather tough hike.

But it didn’t end there - after a while it started to be really windy and as soon as you stopped walking you started to freeze, since all the clothes at this time were soaking wet from rain and sweat. It was time for more clothes, which makes it even harder to move.

You would think that all this would be enough, but NO. The next thing was SNOW. The combination of snowy tracks, mist and “snowstorm” didn’t improve my already quite bad mood. I mean, who enjoys not see where you are or where you are going, freeze like he.., sink through deep snow and have no idea if you were close to the hut or not. The hike was supposed to take 4 hours, but after 4 hours I realized that we were not even close. My altitude meter stated that we should have at least 400 altitude meters left (which is a big difference compared to the distance 400 m). At this point I started to scream several times “Where the h… is the fu…. hut???” and “I hate this”. So it is safe to say that I was in a bad mood.

Then suddenly, after 5 hours if hiking (9.30 in the evening) the hut appeared. It was just a few meters ahead of us. When we finally reached the door I fell into to the hallway stating “that was the worst thing I ever done”. Of course it is not totally true, but in that moment it felt like it.

As you understand by now – the hut was open. And it was serving food. Lucky for us – according to my pulse meter I had burned 2800 kcal on my way up, so my body screamed for energy. I started with a bag of chips (your body craves salt when you have been sweating a lot) and then we continued with Lapskojs (a traditional dish in Scandinavia). It is NOT my favorite, but by now anything would be good to eat.

After the late dinner and some drinks., they told us that we were NOT supposed to sleep in the hut were we were eating. We needed to walk another 200 m in the snowstorm to get to the dormitory hut. I was not too happy with that information, but you just have to face the fact and get out in the snowstorm again. *sigh* Of course the toilets were not in neither of the huts, but in a hut in between. So the toilet visit required yet ANOTHER tour in the snowstorm. You couldn’t see one hut from the other, since it was so misty and snowy. But you adapt and accept the situation and do what you have to do. And as soon as we crawled to bed we feel asleep like babies.

I looked happy in the morning in the hut.

View from dormitory hut, the toilet is the small one to the left and the "eating hut" the big one on the top.

The hike down the next day felt like a piece of cake after the hike up. The weather was not perfect in any way, but at least it was not snowing and we had only mist around the top of the mountain.  It took us less than 4 hours down, even though we stopped and talked to a lot of the people going up the next day.  So in comparison it was a very, very easy hike.

On my way down

 

 

View on the way down

But still – it felt like we have had a real adventure, that we had challenged ourselves. So the food and the beer that we got when we came back to the starting point tasted extremely good and in the middle of it all - I felt quite proud that we, the office rats, had managed a "winter" hike to Norway’s highest situated hut.

The first days of the trip

We have finally started the trip. We managed to find each other in Gothenburg, do the final shopping, put J’s money into my bank account (do you know that all bank offices in Sweden don’t carry money -  we had to drive around for 45 min to find one bank?! ) and go to Oslo on our first day. It was raining the bigger part of the drive, but when we got closer to Oslo the weather changed and the sun started to shine. See below. It was a good start of the vacation.

We arrived safely around 6.30 in the evening to our camping place and I got to see the “car tent” for the first time. It was a pleasant surprise. It was very easy to mount, takes only 5 min to get it up, and you are far away from all the humidity and bugs on the ground sleeping on the car’s roof. See below the pictures of the tent. J’ had of course brought a bottle of sparkling wine to cheer the start of the trip.

We started the day in Oslo by re-arranging the car. J’s had rain in Germany when he packed the car and also when he had to spend one extra night at a camping site (when he missed the ferry). So he had no chance of putting everything in order. Then I arrived with an additional 3 bags, so it became even more chaotic. But it was just nice to spend the morning in the sun re-arranging the car. We found an order we are hoping we can keep.

The afternoon we spent in Museums. We checked out the Wiking ships, Kon-Tiki and RA II and finally the Norwegian Maritime museum. It wasn’t my first choice of museums (I would have rather visited the Munch museum), but we didn’t have the time for everything and these museums were all close by each other. And J was happy that he could see all the things he wanted.

When we started our drive to Flåm and Näröyfjord we were expecting a long boring drive on the E16, but my GPS kept nagging about that we should take the 7 and 50. We decided to listen to her, since she has been right about a lot of other things and we are both glad we did. What an amazing drive. We had a view the whole time: lakes, rivers, high mountains – some even with snow. It was absolutely amazing. We took it easy stopped and several times to look at the view. Unfortunately we arrived too late to the camping site (we arrived 23.15) and ended up spending the night next to a small road. But it was just nice. We had fresh water from a stream nearby and everything else we needed we had in the car. The advantage with camping in Scandinavia – you will find a place to camp everywhere you are.

The next morning we took it easy and left the place around lunch time. We went back to the camping we had planned to stay at the previous night and decided the place was so nice that we would like to stay there 2 additional nights (see below), which now means that we are 3 days after our original plan. J Funny, first we started one day later due to the traffic jam in Germany, and then we took it a little bit too easy out of Oslo, so we arrived one day later to the camping site than planned and finally we enjoyed the place so much so ended up staying 2 extra nights. But isn’t this what vacations is all about? That you can change your plans as you go along? We of course have to cut something else out of the original plan and that is up for discussion later.

When I met J in Oslo he told me that the original foldable kayak that he had bought was destroyed (it was a used one), so he had bought a brand new one. It was the display kayak from the store and unluckily they had NOT included the manual how to mount it. So yesterday we spent the evening mounting the kayak. I’m happy that we are both able to look at things and figure out how they work, so we managed to put it together without the manual in 1,5 hour. We made some minor mistakes on the first trial, but then we redid it, it all worked out just nicely. So today we tried it out. It was a fantastic tour on the fiord, the sun was shining with no clouds at all and the water was calm. I would have loved to show you pictures of this, but my underwater camera (which I use in the kayak, since it can take water) seems to have a quarrel with my computer. She refuses to talk to her. So you just have to take my word for that it was a fantastic trip. Now I’m waiting for the dinner J’s is preparing, drinking a beer and blogging.

The first night in the tent.

The weather changed when we came closer to Oslo

Näröyfiord where we paddled

A plan B is always good to have

We haven’t even started the trip and we are already using a plan B. We were supposed to meet in Gothenburg today, the 24^th of June. But J got stuck in a traffic jam in Germany. Traffic jams in Germany can be extremely annoying - you can be standing still for hours. Yeah – I know that is not unusual in a lot of other countries, but in Sweden it is very rare.

Anyhow – since it was clear already yesterday afternoon that J would miss the ferry to Sweden, we decided to rebook our tickets. Luckily we both had bought rebookable tickets. So now, instead of starting our trip to Norway, J is on a camping place close to Bremen organizing the car and I’m at home cleaning my apartment (and writing my blog). But nothing bad happens without anything good tagging along. J and I can now finalize the last things before the trip without any stress and I can take care of the things he missed when he had to rush for the ferry. We were given an extra 24 hours for preparations. We will lose 24 hours of our trip, but that can be handled with some re-planning.

If I would give anyone one advice in how to make the most out of a trip it is to do a plan and research the place you are going to. If you don’t have the time – use a local organizer to take care of those things. I usually do the later. But in this case we did all the planning and research ourselves.

One of the things we learned in our research is that a lot of roads in Norway are toll roads. An easy way of handling this is to get a Visitors pass and connect a credit card to the license plate of the car. Then you can drive the “Autopass” lane which makes things easier and faster.

Another tip to make things smoother is to get a Camping card so that the check-in on all the camping places will be quicker and also a little bit cheaper. I have also downloaded the latest map to my GPS for some support in our search for camping places nearby.

As a result of the delay I have finished my packing one day before the start of my trip. One odd thing hit me – I don’t have a lot of nice clothes with me, but plenty of hiking and sporting clothes AND technical equipment. I actually ended up taking one extra bags for running shoes, 2 cameras, computer, GPS, power cables and other cables that are needed for these things. I seem to become less and less girly but more and more practical the older I get. Is this a good development I wonder?! ;-)

A trip to Norway also requires a lot of planning

You might think that a camping trip to Norway doesn’t require so much planning. I mean; we are not flying there, so we don’t need to book any flights, we are camping so we don’t need to book any hotels…..But I guess if you know me you know that I’m not doing anything without a plan. ;-)

I have learned through all my trips: if I don’t plan I end up wasting a lot of time discussing or finding out what to do. If there is something I really hate on trips – it is to waste my time.

On this trip we have had a couple of strategies:

·                                    To see all major fiords

·                                    Not to spend too many hours in the car each day.

Plan A looks like this:

Day 1: Gothenburg – Oslo, Drive 3,23

Day 2: Visit of Museum Island (Bygdóy: Wiking Ship Museum, Kon-Tiki_Museum);

Day 3: Oslo – Nærøyfjord, Drive 4, 52, Kayaking

Day 4: Kayaking, Nærøyfjord – Bergen, Drive 2,07

Day 5: Bergen - Hardanger fjorden, Drive 2,48, Folgeganna Nationalpark Kayaking

Day 6: Hardanger fjorden Hike to Trolltunga, 10 hour

Day 7: Hardanger fjorden to Sognefjord, Drive 4,28, Hike Molden, Lustrafjorden 4h

Day 8: Sognefjord, Hike Vettisfossen 5h , to Geiranger Fjord, Drive 4,0

Day 9: Geiranger Fjord with Hike Storseterfossen

Day 10: Geiranger Fjord Kayaking to Lighthouse, Drive 3,02

Day 11: Lighthouse to Ålesund, Drive 3,31 Hike

Day 12: Ålesund-Trollstigen-Trondheim, Drive 4,55-5,52

Day 13: Drive Stockholm, Drive 10,49

All the driving is according to Google maps, so I hope it is accurate.

We are aware of the weather conditions in Norway. So in case there is a lot of raining, plan B is that we will drive east and try to move away from the bad weather. One of the advantages with driving your own car and having your own tent – we can change plans whenever we feel like it.

So now the big question is – do we keep to plan A or do use plan B or do we have to come up with a plan C? Time will tell. J

Introducing my new trip and my travel companion

It’s time again. It is time for another trip. This time I’m not going so far away and not to very exotic places, but it is still a very exciting trip.

I’m going to Norway to see the fiords. It is a bit funny – I grew up 40 km from the Norwegian border and I have never seen the fiords. On top of that – I love hiking and Norway has amazing hiking trails, but I have never done any hiking in Norway. I have hiked on all continents, in around 25 countries, but never in Norway. Why is that? Why are most people so bad in discovering and enjoying things that are just around the corner from where one live? I’m glad that I’m finally planning to explore Norway.

The Norway trip has 2 themes; fiords and outdoor activities. We will sleep in a tent almost the whole trip (except for one night), hike and kayak. So I know this is not the kind of trip that most of you would like to do. But maybe you will enjoy reading about it. ;-)

I will do this trip with my friend J from Germany. We have known each other for more than 17 years, ever since I worked in Germany. It is funny that we have managed to stay friends for so many years even though we live in different countries, but I guess it is easier to do so when you share a lot of interests (like hiking - we have done many hiking trips together). Since he will be a big part of this trip I will start by introducing him for you.

J is a 52 year old man from the south of Germany who likes outdoor activities and equipment as much or maybe more than I do. The two of us can spend hours in an outdoor shop just checking out all equipment available. He is the proud owner of the following:

·         The special tent that are mounted on our car which we will be using on the trip: http://www.autocamp.de/sites/index.php?session=dde0ddee1d6b4a1ddb69ae25ab893213&lang=1&auswahl=2&detail=produktdetails&reihe=4&produkt=10&action=pic

·         The foldable kayak that we will use to explore some of the fiords:
 http://www.poucher-boote.de/modelle/zweier/rz-85.php

So as already stated, it will be a quite exciting trip - especially since we will try out a lot of new equipment. Let’s hope that the camping sites in Norway have Wi-Fi so I can report about all these things.