Hardanger Fjorden ( 27 photos )
After spending a night "roughing it", we set off early from our camping place so as to not disturb the locals, finding ourselves a great little spot nestled amongst some rocks by a lake for breakfast with the sheep and the four other cars which drove past in the half an hour we were there.
On our way back down the mountain to complete the loop, we stopped for the five-minute-ly photo stop (don't worry, we take more as we drive along as well) on a flat section of a long hair-pin wind down the hill. There were some sheep there, and one amazingly tame and inquisitive one came over to see what the big red bus was all about. Liz dug around and found some bread which the sheep and her two lambs snapped up. We have never seen a sheep that didn't run away from humans, this one almost jumped in the van with us!
After passing some goats which we had to carefully drive through (they were sleeping just a bit more than a car's width apart on the road, oblivious to the dak-dak going by), we re-joined the RV13 for a while.
This brought us past a waterfall we had seen the day before, but not stopped at due to there being no parking (there are so many people travelling around these parts - we see the same people over and over). Called Låtefoss, there were two falls which passed under a road bridge, making plenty of splash and noise in the process. Someone had cleverly built a tourist shop right there, so we had a quick wander around before managing to keep most of our money.
Back to Odda which we had passed through yesterday, we tried to operate a cheap petrol pump with no humans around which just takes cards, but none that we had, before taking a different road through the newly-built (so new it's not even on our 2003 Europe Road Atlas - we found out it existed in Lonely Planet) 11km tunnel under the Folgefonni mountains. That's the longest we have found so far, and we stopped half way to take some pictures of the seemingly never-ending low-lit blackness either way.
Emerging the other side, we found that we had to pay a toll which we didn't know about either (we are pretty much used to handing over money here, it's either that or go home). A little further on, our road passed over another huge powerfall waterfall which warranted a stop - all this water spray is making Rosie just that little bit cleaner - ok, not really - she has a pretty amazing collection of bugs on the white high-top at the front.
We drove down to the village of Rosendal, where we stopped for a wander around some shops, tried to get fish and chips but had to settle for just the chips, learnt that the exchange rate for Norweigan Krone against the pound means that things aren't quite as expensive as we were fearing, and learnt that there was a ferry not marked on our Road Atlas which would make our lives much easier, from just back up the road at Løfallstrand.
Heading there, we drove luckily drove straight onto a nearly-full ferry, which took us across the fjord to Gjermundshamn (no, we can't pronounce these names, but typing them is easy) via Varaldsøy, a village on an island in the middle of the fjord. Enough people seemed to live there, and a very nice place to live it would have been too.
One wrong turn later, we were off the ferry and heading North again along the RV49 on the West side of Hardanger fjorden, through the district of Kvam. All along here there were the most beautiful little settlements, there's no real words to describe them, so try a picture instead.
After joining back with the main 7 road at Norheimsund, we quickly stumbled on Steindalsfossen, yet another huge, powerful waterfall, but with a difference - this one you could walk behind. Awe-inspiring stuff, just watching vast quantities of water in free-fall in the foreground with nice mountain scenery behind.
Having seen pretty much enough for a little while, we drove on through plenty more tunnels towards Bergen, choosing a random caravan park which turned out to be very nice. We are overlooking a lake which people were swimming in earlier, and there are canoes around for hire too.
Tomorrow we aim to get the bus into Bergen for a look around for the day.
(customised)