Day 16 - Hellesylt to Geiranger

Today was a wonderful day - clear skies and warm weather, we couldn’t have asked for better.  I woke up in the middle of the night last night, took off my eye mask, and actually discovered darkness for the first time in almost 2 weeks.  According to the ship newsletter, we had a whole 4 hours of darkness last night.  Real nights are one of the things I am looking forward to getting home to.

Hellesylt

We set our alarm for 5AM and had breakfast delivered to our room so we could see a little of the ship’s entry into the fjord this morning.   We anchored off the town of Hellesylt at about 7AM.  Today was the first day we had to take a tender to the dock to meet our tour bus.  The water here was as smooth as glass, so a tender was not a problem.  Hellesylt is a lovely little town.  There’s not much there, but it has a lovely waterfall in the center of town.

Once on our bus we began the day’s adventure.  The tour was called “Overland Tour To Geiranger”, but that title and the description didn’t do it justice.  This was a wonderful drive through the countryside, between and over the mountains.  There was still snow on the peaks and there were waterfalls around every bend.  We stopped periodically for magnificent photo opportunities.  The bus climbed a narrow, switchback road so we could have lunch at a restaurant at the top of a waterfall.  Lunch included a shrimp salad appetizer, salmon and potatoes as the main course, a nice custard for dessert, and a local non-alchoholic beer.

Top of Falls by Restaurant

After lunch we climbed even higher up the mountain on another switch-back road that was built solely for the purpose of getting people up to the top of Mt. Dalsnibba to see the view of Geiranger Fjord.  From there we could see our ship waiting for us, along with several others. This view has been famously photographed many times, but not we have our own version.

View of the Regent Voyager from Mt. Dalsnibba

I need to talk a little about the roads leading up the mountains.  In the beginning we took regular roads, but once we turned off to get to lunch, the roads were very narrow.  Any time we met another bus or a car coming the other direction, one of us had to find a place to stop where the road was a tiny bit wider, so we could pass each other, usually with only inches to spare.  A few times the bus actually had to back up a ways to get to a wide enough spot.  The drop off the side of the mountain was always close on one side or the other.  It was a very interesting ride, and reminded us of our ride along the Amalfi coast a few years ago. 

Bus coming around the bend towards us.

When we got down to the town of Geiranger we had another surprise.  There is only one road down through town to the coast, and traffic was totally stopped on it.  Our bus and at least 6 others sat on the road, not moving for at least a half hour.  Since we were late for our all-aboard time, our guide was getting pretty nervous.  She got out to try to find out what was going on, but all they would tell her was that the local police had traffic stopped.  Finally, she received permission for us to walk to the dock where the tenders were waiting for us.  It was a short walk, not bad at all, and it allowed us to see a little of the town along the way.  About an hour after the team we had been scheduled to leave port, Captain Daniel Green came on the PA system to explain that the port had been put under a heightened security for some reason, and that had caused the delay.  He had finally gotten approval to leave the port, so we quickly got underway. 

The sail-away was beautiful as we traveled out of this long fjord for several hours.  Some of the surrounding mountains are as high as 6,000 feet. The fjord is 1,600 feet wide in places, and 1,200 feet deep.  More waterfalls lined our journey out to the Norwegian Sea.  It’s hard to look away.

We finally got to one of the shows tonight.  The cast did a selection of current Broadway hits.  It was much better than the other show we saw.  The female lead has a pretty good voice and the dancers are good, even if the choreography could use some work.  Maybe it's because we are on a ship and they are trying to keep the dancers balanced in case the ship is rocking, but the dance seemed to be more strange hand motions than footwork in many of the numbers.  They cast also includes a ballroom dance couple who did several dance sequences during the show that were excellent.

We are now heading further south and will have our last sea day tomorrow.  According to the daily newsletters, we should actually get about 6 hours of darkness tonight.  I'm looking forward to that.