Trains, planes, and... ants?

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'tis I again, the man who has a rapidly shrinking bank account!

Yeah, Norway is expensive. Really, really expensive. And I thought Iceland was bad.

Also, there are no planes in this entry. It just sounded better than any other option.

More photoless updateing today, I'm afraid. I started Thursday (I think Thursday was the day after I last updated...) with some cookies. Yum! Some bakery had some fresh ones. I only rated them 6/10 though, they definitely could have been better.

Next I hopped on a bus to the town of Voss, where I was planning on camping. The weather was iffy and the campground cost around $30 for a night though, so I went to the hostel. Hostel was $33 for a night, and included a buffet breakfast.

It was an easy choice.

Friday I took another bus to Flam, a resort town on a Fjord. The world-famous Flam Railway, reputed to be the most scenic rail trip in the world, starts / ends here, so I decided to go for it. I rented a bike, and took the train to the top station, 866m above sea level. It was indeed very scenic, with towering walls, lush forest vegetation, and thundering waterfalls. They warned us as part of the train tour that we might meet elves in the mountains that lure people into the wilderness with their singing. Sure enough, at one of the waterfalls on the way up, some music started coming out of the hills and a few "elves" appeared!

Rather than take the train back down, I biked down the old road that goes down the valley. 866m of downhill over 21km didn't take long! Back in Flam, I checked out the railway museum. The Flam railway is sometimes known as the '20 line', since it is 20km long, has 20 tunnels, and took 20 years to build in the 1920s-1940s. Most of the tunnels were dug by hand! It's also the steepest railway of its kind in the world, and the trains have 5 different brake systems.

Saturday I decided to go hiking. I was going to go up one of the mountains around Flam. Unfortunately, I got off to a start on the wrong road, and soon my trail vanished. Rather than go back down to the right road, I decided to bushwhack my way up to the right trail.

Bad choice.

I spent the next 5 hours beating my way around in some wet, dense underbrush. Often I was on faint animal trails that I kept hoping would take me where I wanted to go, but eventually they all vanished and left me stranded in a field of massive boulders. Then I discovered there was a huge cliff blocking my path ahead. No mountain peak for me!

The only interesting part of the day was the ants. Ants aren't hugely exciting to me, and even less so in mass numbers. All the same, I am completely amazed at the number of ants living on that mountain. It seemed that every 5 minutes (and one doesn't travel far in 5 minutes while bushwhacking) I was faced with yet another hute anthill. And these were huge. Not Indiana Jones-style huge, but most were a couple feet tall at least. The biggest was over a metre. They were everywhere! Luckily, they didn't decide to eat me, even though I wasn't in possession of a magical crystal skull.

Sunday, today, I travelled to the Borgund stave church. Stave churches are pretty amazing. They were built in most of Europe, including around 1000 in Norway that were constructed between 1100 and 1300ish. Only 28 now remain, all in Norway. This one was built around 1180, and is one of the most unaltered ones. Pretty cool that a wooden building has lasted 800 years! It's quite ornate, with wooden carvings in the doorways and on the roof, and a very beautiful structure.

I'm now in Fagernes, a town farther inland. The weather this week is supposed to be good (finally! I haven't had a day without rain or fog in about 2 weeks now!), so I'm going to head to the nearby Jotunheimen National Park for a few days of backpacking in the wilderness. I may not update again until next weekend or so, but you can be sure I'll be getting high on mountains!

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