Jani Bizjak

Today I received package from Slovenia. It was from guess who… Veronika. :) The package was filled with variety of (Slovenian) ingredients, sweets and other kind of food that I can’t find here. I must say I was looking forward to this package for quite some time. Now when it’s finally here it’s half gone already. I don’t remember when, if ever, I ate so much candy in such a short time. And there were some Slovenian sausages there as well, surprisingly surviving long trip up here. Today after really long time I had a Slovenian dinner (or at least dinner with ingredients I normally eat in Slovenian). Thank you again Veronika! ***

Soon after, we boarded BO-AT (Buoyancy Operated Aquatic Transport). As we were boarding they gave us “wet-suits”, to prevent us from being cold. It was a sunny day, so I didn’t felt like I needed one. Soon we departed and were traveling with much higher speed than I anticipated from a boat this size, I started to regret my decision of not taking a wet-suit as cold winds started to blew.



We sailed alongside beautiful landscape, full of small islands and stopped after about 20 minutes. The “captain” and his “first mate” gave us 5 (big) fishing rods and thought us how to fish. Soon after, to my greatest disbelieve, fishes started biting. And not some small fishes, no they were big, very big. We caught around 7 of them in about 10 minutes, then we were on our way again.



We continued between two big islands. Landscape here (all over Lofoten to be precise) was very interesting. Despite being near the sea, there were little to no trees and majority of vegetation was alpine, on higher grounds there were only grass and rocks. On the shady sides of “mountains” (the highest being less than 400m high) there was snow, a lot of snow.





After about an hour of sailing we turned in to a small fjord. There they served us fish stew, which tasted surprisingly good (as I don’t like fish that much). If nothing else it warmed us up, since we were mostly in the cold shade (fjords).



After meal we started heading back. This time we took a different route. Instead of going between islands, we went around southern one. Not long after we reached other side of the island, “first mate” started throwing bread crumbs in to the water. Seagulls soon started flying closer and closer, picking bread from the water. More and more gathered and closer and closer were they coming up to the point when they started landing on people and picking bread from their hands.





While this was spectacular to watch it wasn’t the main reason we went this way. As we soon learned, big screaming flock of seagulls attracted something else, something bigger. A big shadow fell on the ground as big eagle covered the sun. :) At that point we threw some of the fishes we caught in to the water. Eagle slowly started to circle the site, descending until he plummeted in to the water, grabbing the fish. Surprisingly (?) he wasn’t successful on his first run, which was good for us, as we got another chance to watch him at his attack dive. Sadly by the time he caught the fish we were just a too far for my camera lens to get a 1M$ shot. But still, I managed to get some decent pictures.





Shortly after we arrived back to the port. Whole boat trip was about 4h long and I think worth every penny. I would go again to Lofoten just because of this trip. It was really an amazing experience that you just don’t get, if you travel alone.

After we came back to the camp, we decided to go canoeing. Three person were able to fit in to one canoe and as soon as we figured out how to put them in to the water, without getting wet, we were off. The lake was big, long to be exact. It took as around an hour to reach other end. There were no houses this far in to the mountains, nothing to make noise, just calm mirror-like water, trees, mountains and nothing else; surreal.





After almost 3 hours of canoeing we landed at camp and prepared for BBQ. More on this in my next post.

We gathered at LTU on Friday evening. Despite light rain we were all cheerful and looking forward to the trip. I decided to only bring my backpack, so somehow I had to cram all my clothes, bed lining, food and camera in it. Backpack isn’t that big so I ended up sacrificing my clothes, only bringing with me 2 shirts. Mobile phone charger, toothpaste and shampoo were sacrificed as well. Luckily others brought big suitcases full of stuff, so I was able to borrow toothpaste etc. from them.

When entering a bus I was pleasantly surprised. Bus was equipped with free Wi-Fi (even in Norway) and electricity sockets. I was kind of sorry I didn’t bring my laptop with me. When we all boarded the bus, driver greeted us (in surprisingly good English) and told us some info about the trip. Soon after the ride began, he put a movie – Inglorious bastards, on bus TV. I really wasn’t expecting to ever see this move in such a place.

After 4 hours of driving we stopped for the first time in Kiruna. We raided toilets in local gas station and some people bought something to eat. Shortly after we continued. In about 2 hours we reached Norway’s border. The landscape changed dramatically, from wilderness with forests everywhere, to landscape full of fjords. Downside (although I don’t see any upsides) of riding only at night is that you don’t see any landscape through the window. We did another short stop near islands, where we picked up our guide. I didn’t quite understand the story but I think she is Icelander doing I don’t know what in Norway, but lives in Lulea … it doesn’t really matter.

The ride on the islands continued for about 4 more hours. Sadly I couldn’t fell asleep during bus ride, at least not until very end. And that’s a pity, Last hour of ride sun started to rise up. It was the most beautiful sunrise over the islands and untouched nature, I’ve ever seen. Sadly I fell asleep in next second, just to be woken up in 20 minutes when we reached our apartment area (I’ll refer to it as camp side in the future).

Total driving time (with stops included) was exactly 12h, from Friday 7PM to Saturday 7AM.







When we disembarked we brought luggage to our cabins. And I must say cabins looked great. They were all made from wood with enormous windows (whole side wall was a window) and great view over the lake.









There was no time to rest, when we unpacked we had a “Norwegian” breakfast in main building and then we were off to town centre. Oh I forgot to tell in which town we were staying: Svolvær.

I’ve decided to make a lot of smaller posts instead of a big one in favour of optimization and faster webpage load time. So To be continued in next post.

Some more pictures of aurora.