Close Call

---

Geo: 58.9644, 5.72626

Our final stop in Norway was to be in Stavanger (sta-vaahn-ger), and our expectations were tempered given its title as the "oil gateway for Norway" and the belief that nothing could approach our experience from the day prior in Flam. We were wrong on both counts. Stavanger is fairly large, as Norway goes, with 125,000 people. Most of the oil industry is headquartered here. We'd expected to see it as large transit point for oil, but that was not the case. It is more the managerial hub for Norwegian oil. On our original flight to Copenhagen, SAS was touting their new non-stop flight linking Stavanger and Houston as "oil capitals of the world."

The perfect weather from the day before held, and it was a lovely slow cruise into the very narrow cruise ship harbor, where two other ships were already docked. While clapboard houses were built up to the waters edge, and it had a very New England feel to parts of it. We'd booked a private tour to the Lyseford, which features Pulpit Rock -- a large, naturally flat outcrop of rock located 2,000 feet above the deep fjord. We were only in port from 9:00am to 4:00pm, and our tour left at 10:00am. We "backed in" to our berth, and we saw that our tour boat was moored literally next to us, so finding the assembly point would not be a problem.

We disembarked on got in line to check in, but it turned out that everyone else had the same idea. The small port area was now very crowded, as there were already large numbers of people who had gotten off the other two ships which docked before we did. The fact that most of these people were Italian and Russian only made it worse, as they had no inclination to wait in line. Chaos reigned for a short while. Nonetheless, we forced our way forward, picked up our pre-booked ticket and walked onto the ship about 9:55am. At exactly -- I mean exactly -- 10:00am, the tiny front gangway was raised, even as several women were running toward it. Close enough to step around the now-raised gangway and onto the ship, we watched a couple of crewmen turn them away. At least the Norwegians are punctual!

The tour was about three hours, and we slowly sailed out of the main harbor and through a series of small fjords and inlets, the sides of which were dotted with dozens of summer homes. We'd seen these homes at many stops during our trip, and the guide explained that they hardly ever go on the market; rather, they're held by the same families for generations.

The highlight of the tour was when we turned into the Lylesford, which though wider than the fjords we'd left the day before, was equally as beautiful. At several spots, the pulled the boat directly up to the cliffs. On one point we pulled up to a small herd of goat which summer on the steep hillside. They've been conditioned that the tour boats will feed them, and as soon as they saw us approach, they scurried down to a rocky outcrop and patiently waited until the gangway was lowered and a crew member walked out to feed them by hand.

At the turning point for the tour, we pulled directly below Pulpit Rock. It was only after looking at pictures taken on 42x zoom that I realized that there were people up there sitting on the edge. If we'd had more time, we could have added on an optional leg, which would have allowed us to hike and back from the rock; they say it is a 4-hour roundtrip hike from the nearest road. At this point, too, we pulled directly up to a waterfall cascading down from the top. A crew member put a large bucket on the end of a rod and held it out in the splash to fill it; he then walked around the ship handing out cups of the pure water, which was ice cold.

We all dozed a little off and on during the ride back to Stavanger. We were sitting in the very front row of the inside section, and as we approached the dock, the area in front of us immediately filled with a couple dozen very anxious looking people. As soon as the crew opened the front door to go out and prepare for docking, some of the most anxious pushed their way out onto deck, though I'm sure it was not allowed. As the gangway was lowering, a few started to push their way forward and they were off the boat as soon as the gangway touched the edge. We couldn't figure out why they were in such a hurry, but we just waited patiently while all of those people rushed off. We walked right back onto our ship and up to have lunch. As we were beginning to get our food, I looked outside and saw that the Costa ship next to us was pulling away from the pier. At that point we realized all those people in a hurry were trying to make it back to the Costa ship before it left. We'd docked directly alongside our ship, whereas the Costa boat was all the way around the harbor. I'm not sure all those people with us made the ship before it left.

After lunch, Anna elected to shower and rest, so K and I got off to explore the town in the remaining hour and a half or so that we had in port. This was the first sizable town we'd visited and, as such, we found a beautiful old section filled with non-tourist shops, which was a nice surprise. After we thought we'd finally found all the souvenirs we "needed," we came across a small pottery studio and found a little trinket we wanted to buy. Until now, I had not withdrawn any money from the ATM, as we'd been able to use our credit card for every purchase. As in Canada, nearly everywhere was set up to accept credit card payments for the smallest amounts on small wireless devices, so long as you had a card with an embedded chip. One of our cards offered this, which is still a rarity in the U.S., so we had that card and it had worked well. This little studio, however, couldn't take any credit cards, and I had no cash. We had about 30 minutes before we had to be on the ship so we set out to find an ATM. After a couple of detours we found ourselves back at the pier at an ATM attached to a 7-11. Side note -- 7-11's are all over Norway and Sweden. Scandinavia, it turns out, has the highest per capita consumption of coffee in the world, and 7-11's are known for providing reasonable and good-quality coffee. Anyway, we only had about 15 minutes to spare, so I made the withdrawal and recommended K go back to the ship -- no reason to take a risk of us both being left behind. I then ran back up the hill to the shop. The ATM had not allowed me to withdrawal the exact amount of Kroner I wanted, so I was a little short for the item we'd selected. The woman was waiting and had it wrapped. She told me to not worry about the price difference, but instead urged me to run, lest I miss the ship. Suffice it to say, I made it back in the nick of time. They were loading up the first gangway as I boarded, and by the time I got up to our room, found K relieved that I'd made it, and walked onto our balcony, they were already casting off the mooring lines.

---