Sunday, August 13, 2023
I did sleep well, but I also wake up early. My first thought is the showers, because there will be a line shortly. When I get out of the sleeping bag I see that it is still wet. In fact, it probably rained because the tent is very wet. Strange enough also on the inside of the outer tent. Condensation ?
We shower, eat in a very busy common room, and make sandwiches for lunch.
Yesterday I found that my phone was not charging. Fiddled around with the cable. Probably broken. I try another cable and it seems to be working. Always a bit of a problem with Apple. So during breakfast I charge it.
We don’t know yet if we want to stay here for another night, so we leave the tents to dry and drive to the national park 10 minutes away. It has the campground we visited but chose not to take because of lack of a kitchen. There many people here - think hundreds - and there are many trails up the mountains and to the glaciers.
We start with a trail to a waterfall. It goes up rather steeply. There are many trees here and soon we hear water falling. It’s only a brook tumbling over the rocks. When we reach the real falls they come down over a cliff built of basalt columns. Strange: normally the top recedes a little because it breaks off, and the base protrudes a little because stones have fallen down. But here the top protrudes. Basalt columns seem glued to the top of the stone wall, left and right of the waterfall. Almost artificial.
But Sisi is completely exhausted so we decide not to continue this mountainous trail but to return to the start and take the trail to the nearby glacier.
This is a horizontal trail and after an hour we reach the place where the melting water gushes forth from the ice. The air is cool, but it is not unpleasant. The trail - especially at the end - is tricky, because it’s on lose stones and gravel of the steep mountain side. The snow and ice are full of deposits and almost black. In fact if I didn’t know, I would not have thought it was ice.
Besides the stream, there is hardly any sound. There are no birds either. It is the - for me - familiar arctic silence. And brings back memories of walking through knee deep snow in the frozen forests of New England. And the absolute silence of a cool summer morning in the wilderness of northern Finland, where Didi and I hiked without trails. That silence is marvelous to me.
Then we return to the campground where we find the tents dry. We have late lunch, gather all our belongings, and start to move farther west over route 1.
Most of the time we drive through bare infertile coastal plains. Black gravel as far as the eye can see. Until on the right suddenly green steep mountains appear. Then the land becomes grass covered - and beautiful.
At a gas station we are able to buy banana’s and milk. And then we turn inland over a dirt road where our speed decreases to 30km/h (20 mph). The road is not bad, but becomes very accidented and hilly. The mountains around us also change in nature, become green but no bushes or trees, very steep but not extremely high. The valley becomes very narrow and weird looking rock formations appear at the tops of the otherwise smooth mountains.
It looks like mountains in Lord of the Rings.
After half an hour the road stops in a mostly round and completely flat valley, surrounded by steep moss covered mountains: our campground.
No kitchen but hot water (but only 2 showers) and no kitchen. And basically no internet. So Didi cooks and for the first time we use our camping stove. It’s nice to be truly camping again. Although a bit cold, because clouds cover the limited sky between the mountain tops.
Sisi takes a beer and gets even colder. But soon the macaroni with ham and cheese is ready, and we eat well.
It’s after dinner now. Sisi has turned in already. Didi reads and I write. A group of Italians is busy around some vans. I hear snoring from a tent not too far away. The campground is fairly large (couple hundred meters (yards) diameter) and is mostly empty. But sounds carry far. Also, a little brook tumbles from a mountain side.
I am also going to bed.
2025-02-10