Melkevoll Bretun

Currently we are staying in an area of the Western Fjords called Oldedalan. It is almost impossible to find on a map, and in fact, we couldn't even find Oldedalen on Google Maps, but the town of Olden we could find, and that is about 24km from where we are. I cannot really even begin to describe how beautiful it is here.

We are staying in a cabin (the second on the left in the photo above) that is part of a large campsite called Melkevoll Bretun at the foot of the Briksdalbre Glacier. All around us there are mountains, raging waterfalls that cascade down the mountains and become the icy-blue rapids that rush by our door, and in the distance, the quiet fjordwaters.

It is truly an amazing place. Yesterday we walked up to the foot of the glacier. Well not exactly the foot, but close enough. The walk is about 60 minutes from where we are staying, and, is of course, a straight vertical ascent. People certainly are fit here. Along the way there are markers of where the glacier used to terminate in the 1700's, 1800's, 1900's and of course, now. It is incredible to see how much this glacier has retreated in the past few hundred years.

At the foot of the glacier is a still, peaceful pond of melted ice, and there are chunks of ice floating in it. Brave souls wade into the water to carry out as big a lump of ice as they can carry, and then everyone in sight takes turns picking it up and having their picture taken with it.

We are looking forward to taking some more hikes and to going kayaking in the fjords. This is such beautiful country, and I am so glad we decided to continue our journey. I would not have wanted to miss this.

The Norwegians here have all been extremely nice to us, and so far we are the only native English-speakers here.

I do have one question though: what on earth do the Norwegian people eat in day-to-day life?! Restaurant food that we had in Lillehammer was not good, and the only affordable item on the menus was pizza.

In the grocery stores, meat is incredibly expensive: two salmon fillets cost almost $50, and I'm pretty sure they were from frozen. I had the idea that fresh fish was going to be abundant and relatively inexpensive, but clearly I was wrong. Maybe this is why they eat so much ham and cheese and waffles-they are the only things that are affordable. And hot dogs. They LOVE hot dogs.

They do seem to also have a love for food in tubes. I saw many items in the grocery that were in tubular form: mayonnaises, both plain and in many different flavors like bacon and shrimp; all sorts of condiments; Nougatti (that wonderful Nutella-like spread); plus all sorts of caviar and fish pastes.

These caviar tubes are yummy. Well, the tubes aren't yummy but the stuff inside is. It's like a red caviar paste that you can spread on a cracker and it is tasty. Why we don't have more tube-fish in The States I will never understand. I'd buy it, that's for sure.