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Year: 2009

2 days of skiing

2 days of skiing

We just got back from our 2 day skiing adventure! I’m writing this as my sister is already sleeping upstairs, and Paul has fallen asleep in his chair – we came back really tired 😉 but we had a great time! We woke up to rain on Saturday morning, but we decided to go anyway. We drove to Snarbyeidet, where we parked the car and started our trip. Luckily it had stopped raining! My sister (Laura) had never done any cross-country skiing before, but she picked it up quickly. We had lunch at Trollvasbu, where we met a group of students who were staying there for the weekend. After lunch, we continued our trip, and from this point on we didn’t meet anybody for the rest of the day – just us in these enormous landscapes!

Laura and Paul were quite exhausted at this point in the trip 😉 It was actually very “warm”, a few degrees above zero, with a very strong wind. It was tough going against the wind – good thing it was warm but having to work hard against the wind does make you very sweaty and warm.

The last bit was quite tough going, as the snow was very icy. Here I am warming up with a mug of a kind of blueberry drink that you prepare with warm water – a good compromise when you’re with a group where some people don’t want to drink coffee, some don’t want tea WITH milk and some don’t want to drink tea WITHOUT milk 😉 

 

At around 17:00, when it was getting dark, we finally reached our destination – a hut called Nonsbu. It turned out to be a small but cosy and comfy hut, divided into 2 parts. We had the entire hut to ourselves, so we chose the cosiest part of the hut – the part where you can sleep around the fireplace 🙂 These huts don’t have electricity or water, but they have a large supply of wood for the stove, and also gas to cook on. So we had candlelight 🙂 and we had to melt snow on the stove…

 

It was very cold inside when we arrived, but after we burnt the stove for a while, it actually became too hot inside and we had to open a window! We had a nice dinner, played some games and then we all fell asleep quite early. 

I was up early the next morning, and took these photos of the hut… it was beautiful!

After breakfast, cleaning up and packing our backs, we continued our way. It was again a cloudy day, though the sun was breaking through the clouds sometimes, and there was no wind at all. We skied up quite a bit, and then started out way down. We found very nice snow and nice open slopes – lots of fun! My sister is a tree hugger…

We had lunch at another hut, BlÃ¥kollkoia. This one is even smaller and sleeps only 4 people. We didn’t stop for very long, as we still had to continue to Movik to catch our bus back to Tromsø.

We ended up missing our bus though… We were getting a bit tired and it was still a long way to go. We crossed Movikvatnet (a lake) and from there down to Movik. There are some very steep bits there, and it was getting dark so we were quite slow. We didn’t really mind missing our bus, instead we got a bus going north so we could pick up the car and drive back to Tromsø. This took quite a bit longer, but it means we have the car back now instead of having to go get it tomorrow night. 

We had the GPS with us, and Paul made this nice image of the map with our track on it… red for the first day, and blue for the second day. We did about 13-14 km on both days.

And here are the height profiles for day 1 and day 2! They have some errors in them, like we actually started at about 100 m on the first day, and on the second day it looks like we dropped a 100 m but that was just adjustment of the GPS. 

I’m quite proud of what we achieved! And I enjoyed doing a trip where you don’t take the same way back. Staying in a hut overnight enabled us to get so much further than we ever do on day trips… very nice! It was tiring though, skiing with a heavy backpack, and it also requires quite careful planning on what to bring, especially food/drink wise, but Paul is very organized with that, and he even made a “feeding schedule” for both days. It all went fine, and I’d love to do it again!

Lucky

Lucky

I haven’t gotten around to editing any more of the Mexico photos, but I just found these photos that I took last Saturday. We went for a drive around Ramfjorden, to check out the sea ice (we are hoping to go ice-fishing!). I had been back for less than 24 hours, was very tired (jetlagged) and still trying to adjust to the very different climate here… I guess I didn’t pay that much attention to my surroundings, but I took pictures anyway 🙂 I then forgot about them, but found them on the camera tonight…

Mist over the fjord…

So beautiful! It made me realize how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place… Harsh but beautiful, something I do forget sometimes… Sometimes I only see the disadvantages: the cold (you can’t just walk out of the door, always have to put on many layers), the dark (though that’s getting better very quickly now), the slippery roads (my bruised knees 😉 ), not seeing any flowers until at least May, no singing birds (unless you count screaming gulls)… but HEY there is so much more! It’s an incredibly beautiful place, and we really can just walk into the outdoors from our own house – I shouldn’t be complaining!

My sister is arriving tomorrow, and we’re going on an overnight ski trip over the weekend – how exciting! I’ve never done that before (not even in Summer), and finally feel confident enough 🙂 We are taking a quite easy (almost flat) route, and not much distance, and staying in a mountain hut in the middle of nowhere. I’m really looking forward to it! More photos soon 🙂

Mexico: Xochimilco

Mexico: Xochimilco

I came back from a week in Mexico City last Friday night, and am still trying to adjust to being back in the cold north 🙂 It was wonderful having a week of summer in the middle of winter, and I really enjoyed spending time with friends there. I took a lot of photos of course, and I won’t be able to post them all at once. So this post is about the first trip we did: to Xochimilco. It was Tanja’s birthday and we wanted to do something festive.

Mexico City used to be located on an island, and there were many lakes around. The canals in Xochimilco (an area within the city) are the only remains of what was once lake Xochimilco. This area is also referred to as the “floating gardens” (or chinampa’s), as originally they took the mud from the bottom of the lake to create fertile islands to grow crops. Nowadays, you can hire very colourful boats here! 

On weekends, it’s a very popular spot and the river is full of boats, some with people playing music and selling food. We were there on a Friday and it was very quiet… it was beautiful though, such a peaceful break from a busy city! This was the first day we were all together, as Nicole’s flight was cancelled and she arrived a day late – so it was a perfect way to relax and catch up 🙂

There weren’t many other boats out, we only met a few. These ones were being moved by a kid who had to work hard to keep going! After the boats we walked around the centre of Xochimilco – one thing I really like is the amount of Volkswagen beetles in Mexico City! There are lots of these green-and-white taxi’s but you also see a lot of other beetle’s driving around. They were still made in Mexico until five years ago – the last place where they were produced.

We went to the market, such a wonderful mix of exotic fruits and vegetables 🙂 The colourful dolls behind up are modern versions of piñatas, they are used at (children) party’s and when you destroy it you are rewarded with sweets that are hidden inside.

There was a big flower market too, so we bought some flowers for Paola’s mum. We spent some time relaxing in their garden, very nice!

In the afternoon we had a nice lunch outside, and after that we left Paola to do the last preparations for her wedding (the next day!). In the evening we went to a small restaurant just across the street from our hotel, for some birthday cake for Tanja – they had very good cakes!!

Ok, that’s all for now! More soon, I hope. My sister is also coming to visit on Thursday, so it’s a busy week!