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lindsaystravelblogs · 2 years

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Voss to Voss

We woke to a wonderfully moody view across the lake. Most of the scene was shrouded in cloud that came and went several times as it’s internal mood took it. We were up about 6am and down for an astounding breakfast by 7. When I say ‘breakfast’, the feast has to be seen to be believed. There were seven areas of food, everything imaginable, hot and cold, a dozen sorts of drinks, six breads, fruits, dried and fresh, of every description, heaps of cold cuts, a huge highly creative salad bar, a plethora of pastries, a few different pancakes and waffles, hot food galore - it goes on and on (and on). They even had a clown that toured the tables that had kids and kept them amused. I saw quite a few people walking around with their phones up, just filming the extraordinary abundance laid on for us.

We ate a couple of breakfasts, maybe three each, and wrapped up some more for a snack or three during the day. At least, we won’t go hungry!

After breakfast and still reeling from all the food, we walked past our bus stop and crossed the road to purchase a few extras for lunch. As we exited the shop, we saw hordes of people, many with huge volumes of luggage, spewing out of the station and heading for our bus stop. We hurried over and acted ignorant and crashed the queue about a quarter of the way up. No great problem because a hundred other people also jumped the queue, making our reckless endeavour pretty pointless. Turns out that there were several buses so not a big problem but we were on the first one anyway, although unable to sit together.

The bus took us to the Sogne Fjord Ferry, an hour or so away through spectacular mountains and pastoral scenery with a 20-minute stop/buying opportunity at a hotel and gift shop. We stayed outside and enjoyed a short walk and took some photos while most of the others indulged themselves in the shop.

There was a long queue for the ferry and we had to wait quite some time while a few hundred passengers disembarked before we could get on. I don’t know how long the fjord is but I guess it would be 30 or 40 kilometres and we called in at 5 or 6 communities, maybe resorts, on our way to Flam (pronounced Flom) where we disembarked. En route, we saw a few boats, including a couple of jet boats loaded with adrenaline junkies, as well as a few stand-up paddle boarders (looked like classes) and at least 200 kayakers: a few singles, but mostly in groups of from 4 to about 10. It looked strange to see all the tiny brightly coloured specks in the water with the giant monolithic rock-face towering sombrely above them. Man and his/her machines are so insignificant against the backdrop of nature.

Today we saw at least a thousand waterfalls, probably a few multiples more. I said that we had not seen a lot of spectacular topographical features. I was proved abysmally wrong today as we cruised the Naeroyfjord (part if the Sogne Fjord I think) on the ferry. The sheer brooding rock face was often at least 250 to 300 metres high, scarred in many places where a few million tonnes of rock crashed down, probably scoured by immense glacial pressure a thousand millennia ago. Much of the fjord was vegetated with grasses, shrubs and a few small trees. And everywhere was water. We sailed in very deep water but we were never out of sight of at least 3 or 4 waterfalls - I counted 13 unconnected falls in one place. They ranged from sneaky little cascades escaping the last few metres of shrubbery, to the huge geyser-like torrents of meltwater roaring down the rocky slopes or free-falling two hundred metres and more over the edge of the precipice. A thousand ribbons of water festooning the walls, flapping willy-nilly left and right but always downward to join the sea below. One massive waterfall we saw late in the day (I will post a photo in due course) was quite astounding. It fed a hydro scheme but the sheer volume of water from that fall makes me wonder at the mass of snow in Norway. The fall is simply meltwater but it is enough to drive the turbines 24x7x365 and it boggles the mind how that much snow could melt in the entire northern hemisphere! Yet that was just one of thousands of smaller snowmelt waterfalls we saw on the day and many of them were at least as big as anything we see in Australia. No spectacular topographical features?

The ferry called in at a few small ‘villages’ and finally disgorged us at Flam - Tourist Town Extraordinaire. It was a tourist’s shopping Mecca but definitely not our scene. We tried to get an earlier train out but that was not a goer so we just walked around the area at the side of the lake. A few brave people went swimming but we just examined the bird life and wildflowers and enjoyed a drink in a restaurant before queuing for the train.

The Flam Railway is famous for its views, but we had seen as good from the train from Oslo - except for the massive waterfall I mentioned above. The train stopped for ten minutes to let everyone out for photos - dampening/drenching us all with its swirling cloud of spray. There are ancient myths about the waterfall and we saw some ruins halfway up. As we ogled the falls, some music started and a woman in flowing orange robes started an elaborate dance on the ruins, periodically disappearing and reappearing in another place. Very dramatic, (operatic and entirely consistent with the supernatural nature of the myths) but we were getting very wet so returning to the train was on most people’s minds.

We were deposited at the end of the line at Myrdal (866 metres) where we caught the scheduled train back to Voss. We bought burgers and onion rings for dinner and by the time we had caught up with some complex emails, it was almost 11pm - still broad daylight outside - and we retired. It had been an interesting day in four or five distinct parts. Flam was a little disappointing and the ferry, although spectacular, was a lot of similar scenery - how does one remember a thousand separate waterfalls, many kilometres of majestic rock walls, uncountable mountains and millions of tons of snow? But a collage of the images is embedded in our brains. How could we ask for more?

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