NORWAY IN A NUTSHELL

2 August 2015

We head off the next morning after a wet night and head up via Stavanger to the end of the road at Mortvika to catch the ferry.  We had to drive through two huge tunnels  – the first one was 9km and the second one was 5km.  They are so long you think you are never going to come out the other end.  Some of the tunnels are a little scary when you enter as your eyes are used to bright sunlight and the lights in some were out or not very bright and it makes it difficult to see.  The ferries are great here, they go everywhere which saves you having to drive around the long way to places.  Plus they leave every half an hour, they are really inexpensive and you don’t have to book beforehand.  Although if it was the middle of summer and school holidays I imagine you may have to book or else you may not make it on some of them.

We took the first ferry from Mortavika to Arsvagen which is about a 20 minute crossing, smooth as and cost us 206nok (aud$35) for us and the van.  They are so quick they roll on and off the vehicles so quickly.  We travel up then via the highway to Sandvikvag.  We were going to find somewhere to stay the night before we got the next ferry but there wasn’t really any places that presented as a suitable.  So we took the ferry from Sandvikvag to Halhjem which is the same as the last one, but was about $10 dearer as it was a 45 minute crossing.  But still for a country that is supposed to be expensive that is a great price.  We got to Halhjem and decided we needed to find somewhere for the night.  Scot wanted to freedom camp so we looked for places to stay.  We drove into a little place called Osoyro not far from the ferry which looked like a nice little place on the water.  We stopped at the marina which allowed 8 hours of parking and would have suited us for the night, but there was a lot of foot traffic going past and it didn’t feel quite right.  We asked at a service station where the nearest campsite was and they gave me a phone to ring them but they didn’t have any room.  The guy there gave us a brochure which showed farm camping.  I didn’t know where we had  rung so we decided to go and have a look and see if it was the same place the guy had rung for us or if it was somewhere different.

When we arrived it was the same place but the lovely owner of the farm Inger, let us park in her sons driveway park which was fine for us and it meant we were in a safer place than the marina.  They had a toilet and shower plus washing machine to use so was really great for us.  Inger mentioned that people had travelled into Bergen from here and the bus wasn’t that expensive so we decided to stay a few nights and see Bergen via the bus from here as well.

The next day we took the bus into Bergen and Ruth had suggested we look at the Norway in a Nutshell tour which looked and sounded amazing, so we booked on that for the afternoon tour.  The weather forecast had said the weather was going to turn bad the next day which made us also decide to do the trip on the first day in Bergen.

So from Bergen, we took a train that went through the valleys to Voss.  From Voss we took the bus to Gudvangan.  On one part of the road the bus driver went off the main highway onto a side route which climbed up really high and then came down this horrid steep narrow road (it was only one way) but the view was magnificent.  Then from Gudvangan we took the boat right round the fjord to Flam (pronounced Flom like you have a plum in your mouth).  Then we took a special railway from Flam to Myrdal which is one of the steepest railways in Europe.  The views were spectacular.  Then we caught the regional train from Myrdal via Voss to Bergen which had a cafeteria car with food and drink.  We then got the bus from Bergen back to Osoyro and got back to the van about midnight.  A long day indeed.  I can say that the scenery is spectacular and worthwhile doing – thanks for the suggestion Ruth!.  We took so many photos that the camera battery exhausted and my phone battery went flat.  I will limit what I put up as there are so many.  The main difference between the scenery here and in the South Island of NZ in the fjords is the vegetation.  NZ has rainforest and here is mainly pine/spruce trees but still stunning.  We met a lovely young American couple who teach in Japan and a lovely German couple we talked to on the trip.

4 August

We went into Bergen again on the bus to have a look around the city.  We visited an area that was all timber buildings – more like a hippy kind of place but it was so lovely.  I can’t remember what they called it, but we had a look around the many shops there and then went on down to the wharf.  There were about 7 boats that looked like they were whaling boats.  They had rounded sterns and big cranes on them and I wanted to buy a can of spray paint and graffiti them to stop the whaling.  But a tour guide I got the attention of told me they were actually oil boats so I was glad about that.  They believe they are whaling here in Norway in a sustainable fashion and the minke whales they hunt aren’t in danger of diminishing in numbers.  I still hate that they kill them and I don’t believe you can prove that it is a sustainable industry, as how can you count how many whales are left?  You can buy whale meat in most fish shops and it is on the menu of a lot of restaurants as well.  It is an awful looking meat as it is black.  I believe they may also export whale to Japan strangely enough.  I thought the Japanese took enough whale from our waters.  I read an article that said the whale meat has been getting rejected by Japan because of the high amount of toxic chemicals in them.  Sad to think a place that you would think was very pristine has chemicals in its oceans in dreadful quantities.  This is perhaps why some of the other Scandinavian waters have little or no fish and have problems with algae.

Bergen is a lovely place to look around – it’s Norways second largest city.  They have cool statues all over and a great café scene.  We walked around the streets just checking out the houses some which had cool little stair cases in narrow alleys which reminded me of some parts of Paris where you can climb up staircases in between houses and buildings and virtually get lost.  Scot had to see the church where the cannon ball had launched itself into a wall of a church during a battle with the English 350 years ago and had never been removed.

We even found Scot an inexpensive pair of waterproof hiking boots which really are necessary as we have had so much rain and our runners just get saturated.

We didn’t stay in town late.  We got back to our van early evening so we could get ourselves ready to head off the next morning.