Eidfjord - A mini adventure

Wonderful day today filled with excitement. Started at 9 am with the plan of hiking. Drove to the hydraulic power plant (more on this later) and set to hike to Kjeasen farm far up on the hill. Started the hike on slippery rocks, it had rained a lot at night. Beginning of the trail was OK until it became quite steep and now we found ropes to help us climb, all this along a vertical wall of granite or some other stone. We needed to grab tree roots to help us climb as well. Time had come to think positive, we will make it to the farm, yes we will. Not another person on the trail....wonder why? And suddenly, here we were in wild blueberry heaven. No better reward. I gorged on them. Glenn kept his goal in mind, ate some and kept going. How to pass on this? I was hiking 30 m, ate 2 hand full of blueberries, hiked 30 m and ate 2 hands full of blueberries (am I not retired? shouldn't I take the time to enjoy these little pleasures?) and finally we reached the top. Our feet, socks, shoes, pants were soaked, our glasses were fogged. We sweated a lot but we made it. In the farm, two girls were making waffles and were serving coffee for a fee. We bought some and sat inside the farm. Beautiful setting. One of the reason to hike up there was for the view. Well, no view, only fog. After 15 min of truly enjoying this perfect atmosphere, came 40 people from a tourist bus....crap, here went our peace! Then we started debating our options to go back down. Hiking down the same way we came up was almost inconceivable, too steep, too slippery, not sure we could make it safely. Let's hike down the road. It is 5 km, no problem. We left the farm and walked to the road. I saw this large opening with a sign "no pedestrian" realizing suddenly that there was a tunnel to go down and we could not walk through the tunnel. What to do? Ah, the bus! I am going to beg for a ride. Glenn thinks that I am crazy. He normally hates to ask for directions. Imagine, asking for a ride! He vanished. All the people from the bus were along the road waiting for the bus to come down pick them up. I started to talk to one, two, three, four persons, all seniors (unlike us!). None spoke a world of English, which was surprising since they seem to be from Northern Europe. One though answered "guide" to my question "do you speak English?". Needed to find the guide in this crowd. She took me to the guide, sweet. Tall guy, not smiley. I started to present my case...."hiked up the hard way"... he cut me off..."then go down the same way", he said. Woo, not a good start to my negotiations but I decided not to give up. More arguments. "Yes we want to walk but we cannot go through the tunnel, could you drop us at the end of the tunnel.....we can pay for this 3 km trip, please help us". "How many of you", he asked. "Two". "OK I will take you". Yeah, how not to claim victory. There seemed to be a lot of people waiting for the bus, not sure if we would have a seat. Everybody loaded the bus. At the end, the guide asked us to go on the bus. Just two seats left for us! Two and not one more. I felt extremely grateful, what luck! and here we were, going through the tunnel in this luxurious bus. We learned from the guide that all these people were from Sweden, somewhere up north (we know now that not ALL sweds speak English). The bus stopped at the power plant to drop us. I raised my arms to wave good bye to all and both Glenn and I said "thank you, thank you". They all started clapping and speaking in their language. I knew that we had made new FRIENDS! Since this time, I have much kinder thoughts when I see a bus filled with tourists...
Then came another really fun moment: the visit of the hydraulic power plant serving Norway and other European countries. Green renewable and clean energy! It took 8 years to create the power plant. Set 700 m deep in the rock. Creation of lakes with dams (above the power plant), pipes capturing all the water above, and a 900 m vertical pipe to accelerate the water captured by the generators. Four generators total. We went inside the plant, saw the top of the generators. They produce electricity for 300,000 house holds. After being captured, the (clean) water is released in the fjord. Norway produces 90% of its energy this way. Smart for a country that has more water and more waterfalls than any other countries in the world.
After this, we drove along the fjord going south, route 13. Beautiful scenery with lots of cherry trees. And guess what, it is cherry season here...only 4 weeks later than cherry season in France. We bought cherries. They were tasty and delicious.
Played Yahtzee and went to bed. Only 3 hours of night here currently. Hard to go to bed. Still light at 11:00 pm!