Ausflug 38

A Midsummer Night's Dream

June-July 2013


 

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June 21st: Bus trip from Hellesylt to Geiranger past the Briksdal Glacier

My 65th birthday! Made it! Woo-hoo! Monika gave me two wonderful cards and a great tie with Yosemite Sam on it, and Princess Cruise Lines gave me a card, balloons, and a nice poster with a ship on it to decorate the door of our stateroom. We had to quickly have breakfast after that and head down to the Princess Theater to catch our driving tour into the mountainous area between Hellesylt and Geiranger, Norway.

In Hellesylt we saw the first waterfall in what was to be a day filled with an amazing number and variety of waterfalls. They were plunging down the sides of the mountains almost everywhere we looked, and sometimes we could see two or three of them foaming out of a single mountain ridge. Fantastic, really.

After pausing to see our first waterfall, we drove up from the fjord that connects Hellesylt and Geiranger into the higher plateau beyond. The plateau featured mountain lakes and a huge (400+ square kilometers?) Jostedal Glacier field. The mountain lakes were a deep, clear aquamarine except where they were fed by runoff from an active glacier, when they had a more milky, slightly greener tint due to the suspended ground-up rock particles dumped into the water by the melting glaciers.


 

After zig-zagging southward from Hellesylt through Stryn and Olden, we finally pulled in near the end of the Briksdal Glacier. Although the clouds were getting lower, the rain held off until we had climbed roughly 1,000 feet along a trail into the Jostedalsbreen National Park and reached the tongue of the glacier. The trail wound its way along the river that flows out of the glacier past yet another waterfall. Signs were posted along the trail documented the recession of the glacier from about 1750 to present, and clearly the Briksdal glacier is currently in retreat. Still, it was very pretty to see.


 

We had a nice lunch of salmon and boiled potatoes in the Cafeteria adjoining the bus parking lot, and that kept us going until we returned to the ship about 6:00 p.m. After lunch we made our way over to the Visitor Center at the park headquarters on a very pretty lake, where we watched a film about the glacier field.

The valley at the bottom of the huge glacier field was chock-a-block with waterfalls generated by the runoff from the melting snow and ice on top. Thus we had a succession of pretty waterfalls that went on and on. We finally climbed up onto the high plateau to stop at Dalsnibba, a high point that offered a great view down the valley and into the fjord at Geranger where the Caribbean Princess was waiting for us.

Too late and too tired for our normal seating in the Coral Dining Room, we opted for a quick meal in the buffet on Deck 15. Afterwards we considered attending the evening show, but were seduced into sitting on our balcony and watching some of the most beautiful scenery in the word glide quietly by. The ship was steaming so slowly back down the fjord that it was almost completely silent, and we could clearly hear the rush of the falling water in the waterfalls along the shore. Fantastic!

It was just like being wafted along on a "magic carpet" as we slowly and silently glided down the narrow arms of the fjord between the mountains looming above us on both sides. In that magical fashion we both saw and heard the famous "Seven Sisters" set of 7 waterfalls in the arm of the fjord between Geiranger and Hellesylt, and there were, in fact, seven thread-like waterfalls all frothing down the face of a cliff that plunged straight into the deep, calm waters of the fjord within about 200 yards of each other. What a wonderful way to finish my 65th birthday!

Copyright 2013 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Southampton Bergen Flaam Geiranger Fjord North Cape Tromso
Lofoten Islands Stavanger Haffkrug Eutin Neustadt Bad Malente

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