tour de norge 1

tour de norge. theme: superman and chilling

 AND
                       SUPERMAN
 

this time i have a visitor with me. Jasmin. funny story. she was hearing about my travels from a friend of ours and followed my web page. after a few thoughts she was sending me a massage and asking if she can join for a couple of weeks                                                                                   CHILLING
 on my trip. gotta be a interesting women tho if she wants to sleep with a complete stranger for 4 weeks in a car. it turned out to be fun, surely it was not easy for the both of us on such a small space. at the end i can say it was definitely worth it and thank you jasmine for being a cool chick, even we had our differences.

 

the plan was hitting the rout 17 down south from bodo, but like it turned out the weather was not on our side and it was constantly raining and cloudy. the desision was made quickly and instead of taking it easy the way down we flew in 5 days to my old made markus in kristiansand. and again markus you are an awesome man. thanks again.

 

first stop was  Saltstraumen. it has the strongest tidal current in the world. Up to 400,000,000 cubic metres (520,000,000 cu yd) of seawater forces its way through a 3-kilometre (1.9 mi) long and 150-metre (490 ft) wide strait every six hours, with water speeds reaching 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph). Vortices known as whirlpools or maelstroms up to 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter and 5 metres (16 ft) in depth are formed when the current is at its strongest. The Saltstraumen has existed for about two to three thousand years. Before that, the area was different due to post-glacial rebound The current is created when the tide tries to fill the Skjerstadfjorden. The height difference between the sea level and the fjord inside can be up to 1 metre (3 ft 3 in).

 

 

 

on the way down with a couple of pics where we did stayed the night

take chill pill my friend. i love it when you just stop when you are tired, eat when you are hungry and chill when...pretty much always ;-)

 

 

 

in kristiand sand my mate showed us an perfect spot to stay for a couple of days. we graped his kayak and took a 2 day tour through the islands and camped on one of them. my island and when i say my island i mean it. its mine( breavehaert, the irish dud)

there are thousands of this little island. ha would be sad if everything went perfect. i have been so exited to get out there and cruse around that i looked way to late back to remember the little fiord we did come from. and i can tell you if you looking back and you see this coast line, it looks all the same. every 100 m another inlet and another island and another dead end. on the way back we paddled for good 4 hours in and out of these little inlets and couldn't find it any more. we ended up to paddle to a little harbour and i took the taxi back to the car. what heroes we are ;-) lesson learned ;-)

it was pretty windy out there and i tried to stay in the wind shadow of the islands, but here and than we have been pretty much on open sea and gladly it was not heavy sea. still a strange feeling in ice cold water and now one around.

what can you do on a island. fishing of course. haven\t been doing it for long but on a spot like that it is more relaxing than chilling in a hammock

 

cleaning, gutting, and to fillet. for cooking i have to rape my coffee cup,  because my lovely visitor took the pan out of the back in the morning thinking, we don\t have any steaks with us why the pan and did get rid of the heavy pan ;-) but she was sweet. after i started fishing she looked at me and sad: mike i think you gonna kill me, i took the pan out this morning. hhehehehehe macgyver. took the inner layer out of my aluminium coffee cup and whoop i did have a pan. yummy

little nap after a hard day work ;-)

 

 

the harbour

the hotel

 



and a awesome few

 

 

next target was bortelid. a friend of a friend lifes there and she had invited us to stay at her house and check out the region around. what a great adventure it turned out

 

one day to early(is not happening very often in my life) we took a side valley of bortelid and started a 2 day trip from ljosland to a little hut in the mountains. norway has a perfectly working net work system with little carbines where you can stay overnight up in the mountains. it is all made of a basis of trust. there is no one there to check. so you just write down what you have taken out of the food box and how many nights you stayed, fill a form out and pay by credit card. it is such an awesome system and it seems to work. not sure if something like this would work in other countries. thanks norway that's is pretty cool.



it is so peaceful out there. you hardly meet someone, you don't have to take water with you, its everywhere. little streams, paddles, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, here it is all about water and mountain.

that didn't make it more easy to hike. sometimes we sunk up to our knees in to the mud. it can wear you out after a couple of hours hiking and you are more than happy to chill in one of these beautiful carbines

that was our first cabin lakkenstova

just a little fire place and to the right time to hide from a little storm










this was a 2 days trip and pretty much a little warm up. now we decided to go for 6 days in a row from cabin to cabin. approx 20 kg in the backpack, card and compass and the tour stared rolling.

playing superman

up the mountains, down again, old bridges, no bridges, pretty much always raining, muddy, windy and totally fucking AWESOME

 i would guess the total run was 50-60 km. it doesn't seems a lot , but in these conditions and with the backpack we had i am damn proud of us and i would do it anytime again. the compass and the card was my best friend, if we did get of the track which is easily done up there we have to choose our own way. and in the evening if you tired and wet there is nothing more pressures than drying you close and put you legs up for the rest of the day. 6 days and it was such fun, i can't wait to do more

FREEDOM BABY

 

 



nina thank you so much it was honor to meeting you. and i hope your dreams will come true. THANKS, THANKS, THANKS.

TO BE CONTINUED