Exploring South a Bit ( 38 photos )
Setting off to have a look around in a southerly direction, we didn't make a huge deal of progress on this day, but saw so much.
First on the list was the better-than-it-sounds Hardangervidda Natursenter at Øvre Eidfjord. This started off with an amazing sickness-inducing panoramic video presentation all about the amazing scenery around the area. Think IMAX, only of places we have just been to from different angles, and places we might get to soon. As Liz said when we left "well, we can go home now".
The remainder of the place was also quite interesting, with displays on fishing, wildlife, camping, and various recreations you can partake in in the area.
At the exit, there was an excellent scale model of the area showing roads and the like - we were down in the valley pointed to by the red flag. This is some seriously steep country-side.
We managed to find our way from there to the road leading to Kjeaason (Great photo I wish I had thought to go and take), a farm which someone had the interesting plan to stick 600m up the side of a fjord. To get to the place itself, we had to wait for a few minutes before we could drive up the 5km tunnel to get there, as it is all one-way and every half an hour it changes from up to down! Liz piloted well, and we emerged at the top, wandered around and were stunned to realise that from the top it just looks like any other piece of farm land. Only it's 600m up in the air, on much more of a slope, and until twenty years ago, only reachable by rope ladder.
Driving south along the RV13 beside Sørfjorden, we stopped for a snack at one of the villages where Liz only just managed to stop me from jumping in for a swim. The water was not as cold as we expected, though I suspect I would have thought differently once I was in.
There were a couple of particular roads that were recommended from various places, and we plotted this day's travels around them. The first was the 13 which we were already on, taking us along Suldalsvatn (another fantastic water-course) towards the town of Sand. Here, we queued for a ferry across to Ropeid which put us on an even more spectacular road (and noted as "only for experienced drivers" when driving anything bigger than a car), the 520. It was along here where we stopped beside the road, a few hundered metres up and cooked dinner. We had views from our "dinner table" all along the Ryfylke of mountains, clouds and of course plenty of forest.
Not too much further along, we found other people camping in a small area up high in the mountains, and decided to join them and save some money for the night.
This meant that we had almost completed our loop for the day, and boy was it worth it. At least one of those roads is pending "National Tourist Route" status, and I'd vote for either of them any day. The rocks, hairpin bends, tunnels, single-lane roads, closed-in-winter mountain passes, sheep and almost total lack of other traffic made it a great day's drive.
So many pictures of waterfalls lakes and amazing back-drops have been taken that it's all we can do to try and sort through them for the best ones.
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