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Kya Travels
We woke up this morning and went for a walk down to the tourist information centre, where we got some information on how to catch a bus to see the Voringsfossen waterfall. Once we worked out a game plan, we went to the supermarket for apples, then went for a walk around the Hæreid area, which is about a 90minute round trip that takes you past Viking and Iron Age burial mounds. As we walked up along the river, it was a very scenic walk, and there was a cool section that was pretty much a wall of rock next to us. There was also a little beach section, with a big lake. We went down to touch the water, which was nice and cool. It was a pretty hot day today as opposed to yesterday's dramatic weather! As we continued the walk, we went past a couple of horses, and another one that was right up by the fence, so we stopped and gave him a bit of a pat, and his friend who joined him too! Very cute! We found a burial mound, which is distinguished by a massive pile of rocks piled on top of a grass hill, with a circle of rocks lining the bottom of the hill. We stopped there for a while to check it out, which was pretty cool, then kept going round the path. As we got closer to town again, there was a pretty cool lookout then quite a steep hill which Darren grabbed me and tried to make me run down! I thought I was gonna fall! We made it down the hill alive and stopped by the campsite to grab the guitar so we could play it by the waterfall, then went to the supermarket to grab some food for lunch and headed to the bus stop. We had a note from the lady at the tourist information centre to give to the driver so he would know where to drop us, that our ticket said was called Måbotunnelen. As we drove there we went through about three big tunnels that looked really cool, lots of jagged rocks sticking out everywhere, not smooth concrete like you'd expect! It was cool! We got off the bus and were next to the river, which was rushing down over some gigantic rocks and looked awesome. There was a little bridge and a path that went across and down the river so we assumed that was the way to the waterfall. We had a bit of a climb on the massive rocks by the bridge before we set off, which was awesome, as I don't think anyone goes up there. There were no footprints or anything and all the plants were undisturbed, as well as it being a pretty tricky climb up! Awesome views from up there too! Then we set off down the path, which had the river running along one side and massive sheer cliff face on the other. We walked along there for a while, and through a cool tunnel in the rock face, and eventually the path met with the road and disappeared... So we walked along the side of the road for a while, not too sure that we were heading in the right direction anymore! We came to a small rest area by the side of the road where there was a camper van parked, and we went to ask them if they knew the way. It turned out to be an Aussie couple from Perth, and they showed us their map but weren't too sure where we should head either. We got an idea of where we were, said goodbye and thought we needed to keep going the way we were going, when they stopped again and asked if we wanted a lift up the road a bit. Lucky they stopped, because I asked which direction Eidfjord was, and if they hadn't pointed that out we would have kept walking in the wrong direction! So we jumped in the back of their van with their little maybe one year old (who was very adept at high fives and knuckles!) and they gave us a lift back to where we had begun our walk. We thanked them and jumped out there, and headed in the opposite direction than last time! And then we weren't sure again! The walking path was blocked off by temporary fencing... So we decided we'd go around it anyway and headed up the path. We made our way up the hill along the cliff and soon found out why the path was blocked off! We passed about three or four massive rock slides that had almost completely blocked off the path, and we had to clamber over the rocks! After about 20 minutes uphill we came to the other end of the path that was blocked off and went around the temporary fencing there, and found a sign for Voringsfossen!! There was a German (I think!) couple there who had just come up the path, and we asked them how far it was down the path to the waterfall. There was a bit of a language barrier there, but they told us it was about a 1 1/2 to 2 hour walk one way! We didn't have time for that until the last bus would leave, so we had to reassess our plans. We decided to go down the path a little bit anyway to find somewhere to sit down and have our lunch. We walked about 10 minutes down and came across a rockslide section that you had to climb across to get back on the path. It had a nice view of the river and some mountains so we decided to stop there. We made our sandwiches and ate our lunch, then chilled out and had a beer while finding pictures in the rock faces. When we finished we packed up and started heading back up the path, when I looked at the time and realized we had less than 15 minutes to walk back to the part we started from that had taken us about 25 minutes the other way! Oops! So we power walked back through the blocked off path and over the rockslides! At least it was downhill!! We got back and were wondering if we'd missed it, when the bus came up, about two minutes after we'd got there! That saves us a 20km walk back to Eidfjord at least!! When we got back we grabbed some beers from the supermarket and headed back to the campsite were we sat down outside the reception with a troll and listened to tapes on the tape deck! The troll was one made up to look like a stuffed animal, it was pretty cool. We made our Norway Eurotube video, then got some more beers and chilled out for a bit longer before heading back to our apartment. The boys went for a walk for ice cream and I stayed back reheating our pasta from last night. We had our dinner, put on some washing, then watched a movie on TV, Crank, before heading to bed. The washing had only just finished when the movie finished at about midnight (damn front loaders!), so we put it in the dryer and set an alarm for 4am, when I got up and brought it back upstairs then collapsed back into bed!
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