Norsca fresh!

A full day on the bus heading further north to a small town called Alesund. Absolutely stunning scenery along the way, everywhere you look. Mother Nature has certainly outdone herself in this part of the world - high snow peaked mountains, gorgeous lush green pine trees that you can just picture snow covered at Christmas time, deciduous trees that are an array of colour from yellow to pink as they change with the onset of autumn, waterfalls everywhere, streams running down pebbled creek beds... its absolutely glorious.

Alesund was a stop off town for us to access the Geiranger Fjord, just added in 2005 to UNESCO's list of gorgeous natural stuff. And it is gorgeous indeed. The ferry through the fjord went for one hour, but seemed like 20 minutes. So peaceful. A couple of things we wanted to see are actually closed already, only open for a month during peak summer season, but its actually nice to be here when there's hardly anyone around (even though we're only just out  of summer here, its practically a ghost town).

So we got off the ferry at Geiranger, a really small town at the end of the fjord, where we had booked a cabin for three nights right along the fjord! We had both been very much looking forward to just chilling out with nature. The cabin was a couple of kms further along the fjord than the main town, and the owner kindly offered to pick us up from the ferry drop off and save us the 2km walk with our backpacks. There were a few other cabins on the same land, but being out of peak season, there was only one other occupied, and being out of the main town (which was only small anyway) we really felt like we had the fjord to ourselves. The cabin was only tiny but the front verandah looked straight out onto the snow peaked mountains and the fjord. We couldn't ask for anything more.

The first couple of days were a bit chilly, but the clothes we took kept us warm enough. There really wasn't much to do, but we really didn't want to do much. We took the opportunity to recharge a bit, read our books, suck in the fresh air - along with some pungent wet-goat hair odours.. three goats appeared outside our cabin one afternoon munching on the tree leaves and after a little while their smell appeared as well.. just like pungent goats cheese... peeuwww!

The next day Paul decided to go for a hike, just like the nature lover he is.. ;) Up some very muddy tracks for about 2 hours until he reached a spectacular waterfall which he was able to walk behind. Not having proper hiking boots, he slipped and fell on his behind a couple of times, but no damage done! The round trip took him about 5.5 hours. It was tough, but he was glad he did it.

Michelle had planned to go hiking too, but when it came time to walk out the door and get hiking, she just didn't have the energy! She was more than happy to take in the scenery without having to exert all that energy walking up it!

We cooked up a packet vegie soup for dinner on the stove outside.. you really need to keep an eye on those things.. they boil over REALLY quickly.. we had a bit of a "blow out" as paul called it.. left the lid on and lost half our dinner over the sides of the saucepan and over the hot plate.. luckily it was a packet that served four so there was still enough to fill us up!

An early night as we had to trek the 2km back into town, this time carrying our back packs (or wheeling them, as the smart one of the two did :)) next morning to catch our bus at 7.30am.. to then catch another bus to the train station, to catch the train to Norways capital, to catch the train to Stockholm where we are now!! And tonight we head off on the ferry over to Finland..!