katspeech

Thankfully by Day 4 the rain had vanished and after an amazing Norwegian breakfast, complete with homemade bread and reindeer pate, we met up with our new friends for the hike out to Kjeragbolten—the part of the trip that Rob was looking forward to the most.  So the seven of us, Sandra & Alma from Slovenia, Mari from Japan, Rick from London and Phil from New Zealand, took a car up the road (complete with 27 hairpin turns) to the trailhead.  A little two year old boy, Elias, who lived in the town (and, hopefully, was related to the driver) decided to ride up with us.  He’d just finished a big breakfast of eggs and ketchup and was halfway through his morning ice cream (??)—needless to say he sat on my lap but, fortunately, was not prone to carsickness!  We took the 2 hour walk out to Kjeragbolten—this giant boulder precariously trapped between two cliff edges 1000m above the fjord.  Everyone but me (clearly the only person with any sense at all) posed for a picture on this boulder.  I steadied myself on the middle of the solid ground and ate beef jerky, warily watching them.  It was so beautiful up there though and this place is actually a huge destination for base jumpers.  After the walk back (again, up and down, up and down) I had what must’ve been the coldest and most delicious beers of my life.  Sadly, that was our last night in Norway and the next day we made our way back to Stavanger via a small commuter boat and flew home to London.

Day 3 was another long trek, but only about 1/3 of it was on a trail and the rest was on a winding road.  It was a much easier walk than the previous day and a similar distance (25 km) but it rained on us nearly the entire time.  We were so cold and wet that we stopped at the first B&B we saw in the town we were heading to, Lysebotn, and fortunately they had a free room.  What an amazing find!  This place was nestled into the valley at the end of the fjord and the B&B was an old farmhouse that had been in their family for generations.  They were even bottle feeding a baby deer, Gustav, who had been abandoned.  He was so sweet—he’d run up to you as soon as you walked out the door when he was hungry and step all over you with his tiny hooves!  After we’d settled in and warmed up, the owner kindly drove us into the town to get some dinner and we almost immediately bumped into two of the girls from the lodge the first night.  All five of the people we’d met there had taken the ferry along the fjord (that we’d just walked along) to Lysebotn and they were curious to see if we’d made it.  It was so cool to run into these new friends and we all agreed to meet up the next morning for the hike out to Kjeragbolten.

We began day 2 at 6 a.m., got ready quickly and re-hiked part of our previous day’s route to get back to the adjoining trail to Bakken.  Only today we had to go past Bakken on to the next hut at Songedalen to make up for our lost day.  That meant about 12 hours of walking ahead of us.  After a bit more searching and taking a leap of faith by following something that looked remotely like a small path, we found the trail we needed.  Seriously, tears of joy!  Now, Rob and I have been doing a lot more hiking/walking since we moved here but Norway is a far cry from the pleasant, FLAT, walking paths we’ve found.  It is either up or down, never flat, and there were parts where we were pretty much scaling rocks.  A few humorous highlights included Rob grabbing hold of a small tree for balance which promptly bent sideways, leaving him parallel to and just inches from a muddy pit (while I laughed uncontrollably) and then karma hitting promptly a few hours later when I slipped and fell into a huge mud puddle, getting everything soaked and dirty.  But we made it to Songedalen and, after quickly jumping into the icy nearby river (to remove the mud) we cooked a hot dinner and made a fire in the wood burning stove of the hut.  Our total distance for Day 2 had been 26 km so needless to say we slept like babies.

Day 1 in Norway started in Stavanger with a visit to the office of the Norwegian Trekking Association. We loaded up on maps and became members to get a discount on the places we were planning to stay. We took a ferry from Stavanger to Tau and then a bus to Preikestolhytta, the staffed lodge at the beginning of the hike to Preikestolen (a.k.a Pulpit Rock). We trekked the 2 hours out to Pulpit Rock (shown in these pictures) and it was soooo windy up there! I was absolutely terrified of getting blown over the edge of the 600m ledge so I tried to stay near the middle—Rob was, of course, walking all over the place like nobody’s business. Our next plan was to find the adjoining trail to make the 7 hour walk to Bakken where we were planning to spend the night in a hut. Trail sign for Bakken? Check. TRAIL for Bakken. Nope, can’t find that anywhere. So after an hour of searching we decided against hiking until midnight in the remote wilderness and we sadly made our way back to the trail start at Preikestolhytta to spend the night. This was all made better when we met the four others sharing our bunk room. They were a great bunch of people and exchanged cell phone numbers so we could let them know the next day that we made it safely! For some reason they seemed to have some doubts about our hiking prowess.

Since we leave for our next trip tomorrow, I figured it was time to post some pics from our last trip!  Two weekends ago, Rob and I went to meet up with friends Giancarlo and Emily in Fano, Italy.  Giancarlo’s family, who live in the U.S., spends every summer in Fano and we now know why (and have plans to return next summer).  Fano is a gorgeous little city on the Adriatic Sea with amazing food (think mussells, clams, cold white wine), and each summer they celebrate the festival ‘Fano dei Cesari.’  We were lucky enough to witness this HUGE event that included a town full of people in togas, chariot races, and dance parties til dawn.  Each time we go to Italy we soak up the culture and love the break from our very urban reality and Fano epitomized the Italian way of food, family (babies dressed in togas joined us for our 10 p.m. dinner), and enjoying life!  (P.S.  Thanks to Emily for the great pictures shown here!)