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GoZa Mite

Tag: Norway

  • Holiday 2020 Day 8

    gozamite

    After sleeping in a car quite many nights and 2 nights in a camping area cabin and 1 in a room with kitchen it was time to take a hotel room.
    We drove to Tromsø and took 2 days in the hotel (Smarthoel Tromsø was very cheap!)
    The way to Tromsø was with one ferry -from Svensby to Breivikeidet. This was about 13€.
    After we put all our stuff to the hotel room we went to check Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden. This was very nice visit! So many beautiful flowers and plants!!

    Amazing colourful flowers

    The area of this Arctic-Alpine is not too big but we checked all the flowers quite closely! After the garden it was to time to go UP!
    The cable car of Tromsø is called Fjellheisen and it will take you to 420 meters above sea level!

    Fjellheisen

    The weather was little bit better than it was in morning so we could actually see something from up there! And took some nice pictures!
    In the evening we were eating pizza just beside our hotel. The restaurant was called Casa Inferno and with the price little bit over 20€ we ate very nice pizzas!

    Local traditional food

    The route for this day was like this:

    Day 9

    Like I said we didn’t move anywhere from Tromsø. But this second day it was already raining. So we visited the Polaria. We saw quite many fishes and plants and also the feeding “show” of the seals. They had 2 small seals (Harbour Seal) and 2 big ones (Bearded Seal). The show was quite nice and these guys knew few tricks. Everytime they did some nice trick the stuff gave them the reward. But I was thinking why they had to be there in this small pool??? Why they will not them to go free?

    Sea anemone
    Small moray

    The most interesting “show” was the short movie about Svalbard. That would really be interesting place to visit! The movie was mostly about how the landscape has been changing there. All the glaciers are soon gone…
    In the evening we had a dinner in Asian place called Tang’s restaurant. About this We would give even bigger recommendations because the price was almost “normal”.
    This day there was almost no driving at all.

  • Holiday 2020 Day 7

    gozamite

    Day 7 was about driving west in quite cloudy and grey weather. It was a big pitty because there is many places to admire the landscape and the view to the sea.

    Few pictures from the E6 to the Arctic Sea

    We took also 1 ferry from Olderdalen to Lyngen. It was about 17€ and took about 50 minutes. But soon after this ferry we arrived to our destination!
    Blåvatnet
    This is a small lake located in Lyngen municipality in northern Norway. Area is also famous about Lyngen Alps where the shape of the mountains is more steep than ordinary fjells or mountains in Norway. The highest peak is Jiekkevarre with 1833 meters.
    Blåvatnet is one of the most famous hiking places in northern Norway. The lake is about 200 meters higher than the parking area and it’s about 4km’s walk. The landscape is rugged with lots of stones and small rivers to cross. Luckily for us it looked like it would not start raining. We started the walk up to the lake about 3.40 pm.

    • River after river
    • Wooden paths
    • Amazing views
    • And river
    • And river
    • This rock was about in the halfway
    • Clouds over the mountains
    • Rugged land
    • And river
    • Getting closer
    • The walls of Mordor!
    Almost 2 hours hike to the lake

    I was little bit afraid when the weather is so grey that we will not see the amazing crystal clear blue colour of the lake. But there was no reason!
    The water of the lake comes straight from the glaciers in the mountains and it stays very very crystal clear all the time!

    Blåvatnet

    The last 200 meters hike to the lake is quite difficult! The stones are big and sharp and there’s many chances to step wrong and twist your ankle or even worse. The consentration and physical struggle made me sweat quite a lot. Now I understood why quite many said to take your swimming pants so you can swim in the lake! I didn’t have them with me (So stupid!) so I just took off my jacket and t-shirt and flushed my upper body in the lake!
    On the way back I took only 3 pictures -Here’s one of them:

    6.30 pm in Northern Norway

    When you search the pictures of Blåvatnet you will ofcourse find those ones first that was taken in sunny weather and with clear blue sky. But when you come here you can’t choose your conditions and weather. We are very happy that we saw the lake at least without rain!
    The route for the Day 7 was like this:

  • Holiday 2020 Day 6

    gozamite

    It was beautiful morning beside Barents/ Arctic Sea. We started driving first to south towards Lakselv city and then to north towards Nordkapp. Even it was quite nice weather I knew it wouldn’t be like this in the North Cape -ofcourse I was hoping that there would be sunshine!
    We made the test cooking with our camping cooking system and I even called to Minna Jakosuo.
    I knew she would know the answer and she did!!

    Cooking water as a test

    If you keep “The Heart” of this cooking system in the same package with all the pots, the steam from the burning fuel will catch the pots! And it is almost impossible to wash the taste away.
    Even this Alcohol Stove has a lid with seal the steam of alcohol is still going outside the heart!

    Alcohol stove

    So we didn’t have a proper cooking system anymore… All the pots were ruined by the taste of burning alcohol. Luckily we had quite a lot of food with us that you can eat if it is cold so we didn’t care too much about this.
    After very nice road from Lakselv to Honningsvåg (about 160km) we at least could check a little bit of this village and the views from the “Viewing point” from the military above this village.

    Honningsvåg harbour
    Same village from above

    So we didn’t visit the North Cape. It was my second time on this island and again I didn’t go to Nordkapp… (Shame on ME!)
    We had to drive the same beautiful road back to the mainland. The more south we were driving the more beautiful the weather was coming! On the southside of Skaidi we made a stop beside the road. It was amazing place with very nice landscape. I made even a drone flight.

    • Question Mark
    • Goahtemuorjohka
    • Picture taken by my wife
    Click any of the pictures to see it bigger

    We took a cabin from the camping area in Lakselv for the night so we could make proper food!
    The route for the day 6 was like this:

  • Holiday 2020 Day 5

    gozamite

    Morning beside the Lake Inari was amazing!

    Käyräniemi, Lake Inari
    Käyräniemi

    We started driving towards Norway. We shortly visited in the last shop to buy something sweet…

    Shop before border

    And very soon in Norway there is very nice rapids/ waterfall called Skoltefossen. We stopped to take pictures.

    Skoltefossen rapids in Neiden, Norway

    Our route was following the Varangerfjord and the views to this part of Barents Sea are beautiful. It was only few days earlier when one my friend visited Pykeija (Bugøynes) village so I was thinking I need to see this too!
    So even our weather wasn’t too nice we checked this small fishing village!

    • Few km’s before Pykeija
    • Fishing harbour
    • Village beach
    • Village from the hill
    • “Famous” Arctic Sauna on the other side of the bay

    Our driving continued over Tana bridge. This is the only possible route from the “Western part of Norway” to the “Eastern Part of Norway” where this country has border with Russia.

    Short video driving over old Tana bridge

    After Tana we were still driving quite a lot before we entered the Silfar Canyon and ofcourse we stopped to take pictures!

    Silfar Canyon 50km’s north from Lakselv

    We found a nice place for sleeping in the car beside the mainroad and we slept well!

    Roddenes

    The route for Day 5 was like this:

  • Tour around Finland Day 9

    gozamite

    This day was little bit cloudy and it wasn’t so hot. We started to ride the beautiful road to Karigasniemi. The route follows the Teno river and you can see to the other side of the river (Norway) almost all the time! From Karigasniemi we turned to Norway, this had to be done because it’s a really nice shortcut to Enontekiö (in western Lapland) -the road in Finnish side would be 340 kilometers:
    suomi
    And if you take the road from Norway side, it will be more than 100km shorter!
    norja
    Almost right after we crossed the border it started raining! And we were riding in the heavy rain about 5 minutes and then the rain was light and it didn’t bother anymore -but the road was wet.
    In Vuottašjávri we made a short sidetour to a small cape in the lake. There was quite nice sandbeach and I’m already regretting that I didn’t go to swim!
    9520_o
    I also fell with the bike here but it was so soft sand so no marks to the bike!
    It took awhile before the road was dry again and we could actually see some sun peeking behind the clouds. It was very nice to stop beside the road and take a good look around you. This part of Norway is called Finnmark and the surraundings here are simply amazing!
    5680_o
    Maybe our visit to Norway was a bit short… We were back in FInland much too soon!
    We chose the road to Näkkälä village (40 inhabitants) and this was again a very good choise! This kind of totally empty landscape (beside the road) is very rare in Finland!
    61248_o
    This picture is about from the end of the road. There’s a beautiful creek (or a river) and this small village with few houses. Ofcourse in the deepest winter it’s little bit different here! (The sun doesn’t come up in 2 months, it can be -30 celsius with more than 1m of snow…)
    We had very nice cabin from Kelotin Rantamajat and we went to have a dinner in Galdotieva -this was unfortunately the worse meal in our trip. Wife had the reindeer kebab and I had the “local steak”. Both of the portions were mostly terrible! Meat was almost burned and you couldn’t tell if it was pork, reindeer or pieces of soil from the yard… We do not recommend this at all!!
    89920_o
    This cabin had the kitchen and toilet! It was very nice!
    My wife made a video of this day:

    The route for this day was like this: