Lofoten Islands

After the craziness that was the first day on the M/S Lofoten (ferry) and the strange daze that was the second day (including a dream about joining some society of polar bears and the odd few minutes on deck after being woken up to look around) I was very surprised to find that I felt absolutely fine on the third day. It was a good thing too because the scenery was amazing, a lot more spectacular than anything I’d seen earlier while on the boat. We sailed through narrow channels with rocky hills/mountains on each side and then finally, just before we arrived in Svolvær, the captain told us that we were going to take a small detour into Trollfjord which we thought we weren’t going to get to see as they normally only do that while travelling in the other direction and only during the summer months. It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. A narrow channel, about a kilometre long, with sheer rock faces and steep mountain sides on all three sides. I took a few pictures but none of them really do it justice. The boat then did a three-point turn in the narrow channel, which was fun to see in itself, and we headed off on our way. It was so incredible to see and easily made the boat trip worth it just for that, despite the sea-sickness! We also saw quite a few sea eagles while we were there.

So then we arrived in Svolvær and despite our best attempts to discover where the cabin we had booked for our stay here was had almost no idea (the web-site gave no directions!). I had found a likely location which we were going to get the bus to but as it was getting late (and we were planning on taking the bus to somewhere pretty remote) we decided not to risk it. It’s a good job we did too because the taxi driver took us to the camp/cabin site we were staying at and it was nowhere near where we thought it was (and seemed to be nowhere near anywhere!) It turns out that it it about 4 kilometres away from the nearest town which isn’t too far to walk, unless you’ve got a massive back pack on! We discovered a while ago that about 2km is the furthest we can walk with all our stuff in one go!

The taxi driver dropped us off and said, “well here you are, it looks like there’s no one here though. Bye!”. By this point it’s dark and we’re nowhere near anywhere with seemingly nowhere to stay, a packet of biscuits to share, and our ride back to civilisation driving away! I wasn’t sure what to do but fortunately Laura’s special power of reading every bit of writing within 30 metres paid off and she found a phone number. We rang them and, after a pretty long conversation where the guy on the other end seemed to have no idea who we were or why we’d be there, he sent an old man with a torch down to meet us. He looked confused and had seemingly no idea who we were either (they’d already forgotten our booking once when I rang up so it wasn’t that suprising that they’d forgotten it again) he fumbled around for a bit saying things like “no that won’t work”, and “now where did I put it…” before handing us a key and saying he hoped it was ok and that we’d have to sort it out in the morning. I was pretty worried at this point! Fortunately the camp site reception had some food for sale so we bought a few essentials to get us through to the morning. He showed us where it was on a map and then headed off onto the darkness. Eventually we found our cabin.

It had been empty for a while and was freezing cold. We turned all the heaters and lights on and discovered a really nice, if a little cold, cabin. Things were starting to look up! Then we discovered that the three items we’d bought from the site’s shop were some gone off eggs, a half drunk carton of, going off, milk and some bread that claimed it didn’t go off for the best part of a year!

Fortunately, we had some jam so decided to risk the unbelievably long life bread with it. It turned out to be some kind of sweet bread but we hadn’t got anything else so decided it was ok. I used my phone (Offmaps) to work out where we were and we came up with a plan for the next morning before going to bed.

The next morning we discovered that our cabin actually had an incredible view and we walked to Kabelvag, the nearest town, to do a supermarket shop. We also had some amazing fish soup for lunch in the pub in Kabelvag.

Since then we’ve had a really nice stay. We found a seal, coincidentally called Boris, swimming in a bay nearby and watched it for about 30 minutes as it dived down to look for food and generally looked like it was having a good time!

We had a couple of clear nights so stayed up to try and see the northern lights. One night we saw them, though they were very dim and hard to see (not like the Scandinavian tourist boards want you to think they are!). We’ve been inside the arctic circle for over two weeks with, luckily, about half of the nights being clear (or with clear patches) and have only seen the Northern lights once, very dimly! I think we’ll have to come back when the sun is a bit more active…

Yesterday we visited the aquarium and saw three more seals, tentatively named Norris, Doris and Horace, a couple of really cool otters, who even managed to look cute while ripping dead fish to pieces, and loads of fish in tanks which mainly looked a bit scary. We also saw a video of shots of the area set to a folk/dance soundtrack which claimed to be in 8 languages but had no words so could really have claimed a few more!

We also read a whole rooms worth of blurb about how awesome it is that Norway is almost carbon neutral despite being one of the world’s biggest oil producers (25% of GDP). I’m not sure about that though as they can only say that because they’re not the ones actually burning the oil/making it into plastics – it’s mostly exported. Someone is, so they need to acknowledge that the profits they make from selling the oil have an associated cost to the environment (as the value of oil is a direct result of it’s uses, most of which are harmful to the environment).

We also went back and got some more yummy fish soup!

I also took this picture which I think should be on a packet of some ‘mountain fresh’ washing powder:

Today is our last day in this cabin and, as there’s a storm going on outside, we’re mainly going to be sitting about doing nothing!

Tomorrow we’re staying in Svolvær (hopefully the weather will be better or we’re going to get pretty wet on the way to the nearest bus stop!) and then we’re taking the ferry (gulp) to Bodø!

The nearest bus stop!

A storm brewing!