Travels

The Birthday Edition

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Most important event of the day – Happy Birthday Niki 🙂 (and Switzerland)

To celebrate (a little in advance), we spent the day in Svovaer, largest town in the Lofotens at around 5000 people, all of whom were out enjoying the sunshine. What a dramatic drive to get here. The road has narrowed enough for me to brake at the sight of oncoming vans and trucks, although the kids will point out that I do this naturally in any case. Have a flick through Niki’s view of the drive below:

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There’s no doubt that Svolvaer’s background is in the fishing industry as the smells leaks into the van on approach. Nevertheless, a lovely town with lots to see and do. As usual in towns, our GPS threw its wobbly and we ended up down a one way, with no exit … except for the footpath. Apologies to Norwegian cyclists, it wasn’t really our fault. The looks on traffic coming towards us who now thought they were in the wrong lane did provide a little smile, albeit nervous, on our part:

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I’ve added a slideshow below of our time in Svolvaer, including our fastboat trip through the Trollfjord, and some shots of closeups with Fish Eagles – magnificent. The end of the trip saw us having our first, and LAST beers in Norway at 196 Norwegian Kroner, or €20.50, or NZD 35.30, or ZAR 319. Yup, that’s 2 beers, not a case!

We made up for it by sleeping overnight at a school car park, presuming that school is out for summer. We did see kids on bikes with backpacks as we were leaving …

Currently we are at Kabelvag, a whole 6km trip from Svolvaer, and seated at a pretty campsite that has provided us with water, showers, electricity, wifi – in fact, the whole 21stC. We are making use of this to have a great fry-up of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes … Living like kings we are. Then we’ll use our Cosori pressure cooker to tenderise our pork & sweet potato curry for tonight – it’s all experimental.

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We are going to get the bikes down and cycle down to Henningsvaer, about 20km away, and apparently, just stunning. I’m also putting together our July budget for posting – Heaven help us!

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Tengelsfiord

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And the Norwegian experience just gets better! A very short drive saw us arrive at the start of the Lofoten Islands. We’ve made a short detour to Tengelsfiord, and what a good idea this was. Niki has again found an absolutely gorgeous stopover. It’s right next to the road, but a car comes by once an hour, so I’m not too worried about noise. Check this location:

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We’re having tea outside, about 10 meters above the level of the water, when we hear these loud splashes – look down and through the water we see a shoal of salmon, which then sport about for the next half hour, leaping out of the water, tail-walking and doing great circles. Because the day can’t just be spent looking at nature’s wonders, we got the bikes down and cycled to the mouth of the fiord. Unbelievable to see the tidal race – really looking forward to Saltstraumen to see the big brother version of this. Having a bit of a rest (all trained athletes do) and a water break, looking across the fjord, which was really narrow at this point, and behold, an enormous cruise ship comes by, filled with people with nothing better to do than travel the Norwegian fjords… A 40km round trip seeing waterfalls, spectacular cliffs, really rugged landscape – and no camera. Well, we were told to enjoy the sights, not just record them!

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Tomorrow is off to Lofoten proper. No idea yet where we’ll be staying, and hoping our luck last. At €25 per night for a campervan spot in a campsite, we are trying to avoid them as far as possible.

I’ve added some pictures as a slideshow, just to show a) how dirty the windscreen is, and b) some indication of the beauty of the landscape:

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Evanskjer

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We enjoyed Narvik so much we decided to stay an extra night. The opportunity to spend a second day at the beach proved to be too much, particularly as, by the time we were up, awake and moving (not necessarily in that order) it was close to 28 degrees. Of course, the sun had been up for 7 hours, even though it was 8 in the morning.

Hearing of the Lunar Eclipse – biggest for this century (?) I made a concerted attempt to see this, but could only find the setting sun, just before midnight. Upon waking, I tried again at around 1:30am, but the sun was just rising. Poor Scandinavians,  missing out on eclipses just so they can enjoy 24 hours of daylight …

Niki has done another fantastic job in getting us to a spot on a causeway to the marina at Evenskjer. We are the only campers here this evening, although quite a few campers came in to use the waste and water facilities (looking at you, U.K.) which are all free of charge. We seem to be doing great with our electricity usage, so being away from power has not been a concern. I’ll do a bit of a write up on gadgets etc at some stage, but for now we are really happy to have installed the 100W solar panel.

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Met Gunn today, who was instrumental in getting the climbing structure built here in Evenskjer, which is also the site of the annual December 1 Ice Swim. I can say the water temperature is a few degrees colder than at Narvik, which makes it slightly warmer than Clifton, Cape Town. Growing up there, I simply assumed you got headaches from swimming, never putting the 10C to 12C summer water temperature in context … Anyway, apparently the organisers of the annual swim had money left over and asked Gunn for ideas. She immediately came up with a climbing wall – what a structure, for about €30 000! There is a facebook page for the climbing club, if you google (verb).

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A gentle 65km drive got us here early, so we’ve had a great day checking out the jellyfish (multiple species), having a swim, and generally unwinding from the stresses of the day – such as my electric toothbrush seems to have spat the dummy and I’ll have to go manual from here on. Not all cruzin’ you know!

Tough life – limited grass.
Jellyfish at Evanskjaer
Evanskjaer
Narvik: Troll Mountain
Narvik: Troll Mountain
Evanskjaer
Jellyfish at Evanskjaer
Tough life – limited grass.

Narvik, Norway!!!!!

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Our last night in Sweden was spent just North of Kiruna, and brought a surprise or two. The free parking site was on the E10 leading to Narvik, at the entrance to a nature reserve, and on the banks of the Vuonajohka river. Stunning campsite that seemed to be, at least partially, inhabited by long-term campers, in spite of the 24 hour signage. I was very pleased that my initial judgements were fully borne out … Continue reading →