B ON THE MISH: Valldal

We briefly heard about the Valldal summer games during the veko, apparently everyone was heading up there, so we did too. Supposedly a 6hr drive we set off at the crack of 2pm, hoping to paddle along the way, to stay in Valldal that night. From Voss there is no simple direct way of getting to Valldal, and with our slightly ripped and very zoomed-out map (doesn’t show small roads and towns) it made it even more difficult. We now know Norway is the land of tunnels and ferries, but lets just say we took a few more ferries than we needed to.

Enough rain. I wanna be right here.

The light at the end of tunnel 186.

The scenery up towards Valldal is stunning, with beautiful river valleys leading up to glaciers and endless fiords everywhere. Tunnels can be quite disorientating, as you just leave one valley or fiord and magically appear in another with only a couple minutes driving, and you haven’t gone up and over anything.

Jakub in front, asking the cows and sheep if we may pass.

Dead end? Thankfully Norway has a heap of tunnels.

Pandora?

We love ferries.

When I'm on the ferry, I prefer Statoil. Statoil has mear mmmmm.

There was a creek race on the Saturday of the games, which Sam and Jamie had a crack at. I’m not sure what the actual name of the creek is but it was known as the mickey mouse run. It’s a short, very low volume, super steep section (but pretty easy) with lots of slides and drops. After round one Sam was the fastest, with the top 5 going again for the final. Not too sure how accurate the timing was for this race, as his second run was just as fast if not faster and he finished up no where near the money. Bit of a kick in the balls really. Shit happens.

We managed to find a sweet camp spot down in the fiord for our time in Valldal. We heard the fishing was good, so foolishly we all bought fishing lines thinking we could catch our dinner for the next few nights. We were wrong. Several attempts trawling in our kayaks brought the fish count up to a whopping total of 1. Luckily the Germans camping next to us had no shortage of fish and felt like sharing with some hungry fishless kiwi’s. Thanks Alex and Suzanne. (they had rods with spinners).