Wed 29 July
Our little park stop was good for the night and we got up in the morning and took off – headed for Norway. As we drove up the eastern side of Sweden, from the motorway, we saw some places that looked really lovely. Especially from about Uddevalla, the scenery improved and looked quite cool. It would be an area that would be much better to look around as I am guessing it is perhaps a little more like Norway with little islands and bays. We had been told the south is the best part, but I am thinking that perhaps this western coastal part is much nicer scenery. As you get further north east and inland there isn’t anything to see as the roads are surrounded by forest so you are unable to see any of the land. There are lovely areas around the lakes though. We will come back through Sweden to catch the ferry over to Finland so we still have a little more to see.
Today it is bucketing down with rain – our 7th day of rain in a row. I guess we can’t complain too much as we have been very lucky to have had so little rain so far on our travels.
We think we will go to a camp ground in Oslo, so we head towards a campsite that is a little out of Olso. We arrive there and it doesn’t look good. The ground here is muddy, slushy, and the site itself looks really dodgy and Scot doesn’t like it. So I go in anyway just to see if they have a vacancy and how much it is. They tell us to look around, but when we do we know we will get in and never get out again. So we decide to leave. The other campsite right in the city is fully booked this week as Oslo is hosting the Norway cup. This is a competition for young football players, whose teams come from all over the world. A total of about 1500 teams compete in the Norway cup so it is a big deal here. We may come back to that campsite on our way back to see Oslo.
We decide to head around Oslo and down towards Drammen. As we come into Oslo, it looks so much like NZ, especially like coming into Wellington from the Hutt Valley. The similarity is quite amazing. The traffic is busy like most cities but it is easy to navigate around. We head south again, looking for a campground but when we got to Drammen we didn’t know where the site was so ended up on the south side miles out of the city centre and ended up stopping at a business and asking where the campsite was. On the northside, almost opposite where we were. So back we went. As we drive down the road of the campsite, there is a massive puddle on the road and right beside it are two young kids riding their bikes home. There are cars coming towards us and we can’t stop in time, but we go through the huge puddle and absolutely drench the poor kids who squeal as they are hit. We piss ourselves laughing, but it isn’t really funny – there is nothing worse than being splashed by some buggar driving along the road, but we didn’t do it deliberately.
There are stores here called Kiwi which we have to check out, but Laura told me they were good value for buying groceries – Scot hopes the beer is cheaper here. Found a spot by the river and hope we can get out in the morning. It is still raining.
Thursday 30 July
I get up and go to have a shower. There are only two so I have to wait. Most of them are coin or token operated and these ones are no different. So you can put a 10Nkk in for 6 minutes or 5nok for 3.5 minutes, so I try the 10, but nothing happens. Then I put the 5 in and the water starts. I have to say that you don’t even get cold water if you don’t put money in – you just don’t get any water and the time starts from the minute you put your coin in, not when you turn the water on. So I wash myself, then I have 30 secs left so I soap up my hair thinking I will put the other 5nkk in that I have to wash the soap off, but I put it in and nothing happens. Crap, I have shampoo in my hair, I am wet, I have no more coins and there is no water and someone left the door open wide to the showers so the whole camp ground can see in. So I have to try to wrap my small shower towel around me, gather up my clothes and toilet bag and hope no one is looking and get into a basin cubicle so I can wash the soap off under the basin. I knew it was a hilarious look but I felt totally ridiculous. I think the owner thought it was funny when I told him the coin box wasn’t working properly.
As we pack up we are worried about getting out of our parking spot. The ground is saturated and very muddy and we are not sure we will be able to drive off the grass. There is an initial debate over who is the best driver to try to drive us out – but we decide it will be difficult no matter who is in the seat. So I drive, but the wheels just sit and spin…buggar!! It isn’t looking good, we may be here for another night…lol. We back up a little as we can’t back up a lot as the river is about 10 metres from our rear and I don’t want to go skidding backwards into it. Other campers come to our aid and with some carpet under the front wheel to get some grip plus a push we manage to get onto the concrete path and can drive out. Scot is covered in mud as are the sides of the van. The lady pushing got showered in the water that had been sitting on our roof, shame I didn’t see that…lol.
We get Scot cleaned up and head out of Drammen. We were going to see Olso from here but it is something like 230nok return each to the city and we may be better off waiting until we can get into the camping ground that is in Oslo even though it is a dump from the sounds of it, it is ok for us to see the city. So we will see Olso on the way out of Norway instead. We head south towards Kristiansand. We’ll see how far we get today and find somewhere to stop later in the afternoon.
On the motorway there are many tunnels. They obviously see no benefit from going over hills as their roads go through most of them. The roads are good and the scenery as we travel is really stunning. Norway is everything people say it is scenery wise. We take off on a smaller road to see some of the local sights which is good, but when you come across a pedestrian crossing, I have to slow down to 2nd gear which is better for the van as it doesn’t knock it around so much, but the crossings are everywhere. It’s a bit slow going, but nice countryside. We get back onto the main highway going south and it’s interesting it changes into a single lane each way and the speed lowers to 70km/hr for most of the way south. At one point, where we had rain and the roads seemed to be a bit greasy, a huge truck with 2 trailers slid on the corner and came towards the van, in that split second I looked to see if I could go somewhere but no dice and I had thought the second trailer was going to swipe us sideways into the rough. My heart was pumping so hard, but as his trailer got to the start of our lane he saved the slide. I thought we were gonners for a second.
We stopped at Sandefjord for a coffee, muffin and make our sandwiches there. Nice little town on the water. Everywhere looks like it has a marina and there are always huge amounts of boats.
We make our way to Lillesand which is on the coast which looks potentially a lovely place to stay. The campground is very full and the grass is also quite sodden but not as muddy. We manage to secure a site, but again had to borrow an electric cord to suit our power cord to their power supply. We need to buy one of these as it appears as if Norway use this different style of plug connection to ours.
Scot decides to go for a run as the rain is easing (we did have lovely sunshine for most of the day). He is going to check out the local area on his run. I give him 200nok in case he finds a pub to have a quick beer – which of course he does! There is a 7 piece band playing tonight, so he chats to the owners father and the bar lady and has one beer so he can come back and tell me the good news. He doesn’t want to tell me the bad news though, that is he didn’t realise the cost of the one beer he had – a bottle of local Norwegian beer which was 129nok ( equivalent of about aud$25) Unbelievable, but it was a very expensive big hotel and also that is Norway with it’s alcohol prices. The Govt here puts huge taxes on luxury things, so beer, chocolate etc is expensive, but so far the prices of food are either equivalent to aud prices or cheaper. We will be interested to see how that translates as we do more in Norway.
Scot persuaded me to go back to that same hotel to listen to the band they had playing. It’s weird how a foreign language doesn’t sound funny but everyone is laughing but you can’t laugh with them as you have no idea what is happening. We decided to have a drink, but a cheaper one than Scot had bought earlier. It was still $26 for a wine and a beer. A wee bit expensive.
