This student organized Canoe trip was full of unexpected surprises and adventures.  We woke up Monday nice and early and met Guya at the garage where we picked up the Canoes and transported them to Banaheia Bay in Flurin’s car.  Once all the canoes were transported we headed out to the fjord just past the sea.  We had 10km planned for our first day.

The weather was forecasted to rain that day but the sun was shining and we even took a little break on a beach nearby.  I canoed with Daniel and I have to say I thought we made a pretty good team.  We traveled a bit more in the canoes and then we decided to stop for lunch on a little island.  Once we stopped we noticed that the clouds were coming in fast so we made only a 5min break before we decided that we needed to move quickly to try and beat the storm.

We started paddling quickly and close to shore but within 10min the rain drops started coming, the waves started getting bigger, and the wind was quite strong.  Ste and Jais’s canoe was in the front and they paddled under a dock, so we all followed and made it safely under the dock where we waited for the rest of the storm to pass.  We waited about 15min and then the sun was shining once again.MVI_7430

 

Once we made it our 10km we started looking for a place to stay.  We found a small stream that had a nice camping spot next to it but some of us thought that it was too close to the road so we decided to look a little further.  The fjord came to an end and the bay was surrounded with private property, so it was pretty hard to find a place to sleep.  We found one spot behind a big rock that was great for blocking the wind and we all agreed that we wanted to stay there.  So we went back to get our canoes and we paddled them to the shore of our new spot.

The clouds were starting to get heavy again and the rain started to come, so we quickly carried our canoes up and built a shelter.  The only problem with building a shelter so quickly was that we did not ask permission from the land owner if we could sleep on their land.  The frilisliv act says you can stay anywhere as long as it is okay with the owner but since we already built our shelter we did not want to then ask, in fear that they would say no and we would have to find a new place to stay.

Once the shelter was built we needed something to do and luckily for us, Daniel only packed cookies for lunch so we needed to get him more food.  We had service so Daniel looked up the nearest Kiwi which was 5km away so we all walked there and got some food for Daniel.  While we were there we found some food that was out of date, and Kiwi has a lovely policy that if you find food out of date you get the food for free, if they have current dates in stock.  So Daniel found some food that was out of date, and they did not have any more in stock so we got to shop for 300NOK worth of food.  We bought hotdogs, chips, cola, and chocolate for dinner that evening, which everyone was so happy about.

When we arrived back at the shelter everyone was pretty exhausted so we decided to take a nap in the shelter while Ste and Roman made a fire.  Daniel left the shelter to eat his yogurt, who knows why.  Then from inside the tent we hear him speaking with a man that said we have to leave in 20min or he will call the police on us.  So we all had to get up from our nap, take down the shelter and pack the canoes back up in search for another place to stay the night.

It was around 9:30pm when we went back into the fjord looking for a place to stay.  We went back down the fjord, so we retraced our path earlier that day.  We traveled approximately 5km that even before we found a place we wanted to stay, which meant we already did half of our route for the next day.

We decided to sleep on a beach next to the airport which was perfect for our shelter; very flat and had a good amount of trees to shelter us.  The only down side was that planes flew right over our heads and were really noisy.  Once the shelter was up we made a fire and enjoyed some hot dogs, cola, and chocolate while listening to some of Jais’s Tunes.MVI_7523

Morning came and we had breakfast on the beach while some of the swans tried to ambush us.  Luckily Ste decided to start feeding them bread so we became great friends with them! No one was worried about the canoe ride home because we had only about 5km to cover before we were back.  The day started with really good weather and a calm sea with minimal waves.  After about 30min of paddling we took a break on a beach then noticed that the clouds were getting heavier and we should start heading home.

Once we started to paddle again we had to put in three times the amount of effort and our speed was three times lower than before.  It was quite tiring, paddling and paddling, then looking to the side realizing that your canoe is almost going nowhere.  We couldn’t take a break anywhere because we just wanted to paddle faster than the storm behind us, and if we were to raft up and take a break the waves would push us back up the sea.  It felt like hours before we made it to the bridge that we planned to take a break at by holding on to the side.  The wind was coming from the west and we were heading south down the stream so as soon as we would turn the corner after the bridge to the west our canoes would most likely capsize.  So we decided to take our canoes out by a little harbor just before the bridge.

I am glad we stopped early cause it would have been really dangerous for us to capsize in the sea.  It was a good choice for us to make.  Once we got the canoes out of the water we hid them under a tarp to be picked up later by Flurin with his car.  Then we were off to Waffle hour at the UniversityJ

Later that evening we went to Jegersberg and spent the night in a gapahuk.  It was really nice; Katja did some light reading, I wrote in my journal, and updated my quote book, and Jais had some bonding time with her music.  In the morning we woke up, had breakfast and decided to do a hike before we went home.  While we were packing up we heard some little voices coming our way.

Sure enough it was a Kindergarten come to play in the hut.  So while we were packing our bags we had 4 and 5 year olds asking us questions in Norwegain and we had no idea what they were saying.  They all climbed on top of the hut while we were packing and kept on saying hi to us.  Needless to say they were very cute kids.  We thought it was the perfect end to our crazy trip.