Day 14 - A Fine Day With Rein, Dear

30 Aug

Last night Clint discovered a mix up in the hotel bookings. The place we had chosen to stay tonight and tomorrow night had been booked for a couple of nights ago. Uh-Oh! Phone call made to the establishment and we managed to secure a booking for Thursday night only as they were fully booked for Wednesday night. One of the online aggregate sites showed there was a room available for Wednesday night, so we booked.

For our 300km drive to Skaidi we wondered if we would have anywhere to sleep tonight. Was there another hotel in the town with a similar name? Would we be sleeping in the car tonight? Do we keep driving, pull an overnighter and sleep tomorrow? Niggling little thoughts.

The scenery continues to enthral us. We had time for some flying and wandering around taking photos.

Yeah I know, more selfies.

At one point we climbed to 401 metres above sea level. A couple of moose we spotted grazing on the hillside.

Can you see the mooses?

The view into the valley and fjord below had Clint keen to fly Minerva. Only problem was what seemed like a gentle breeze as we stepped out of the car, became too much for Minerva to safely fly in. He gave it a go, but she quickly got blown towards the fjord so had to land immediately. Still it was nice to just take it all in. As we were about to leave the vantage point a coachload of tourists arrived. There was at least one Aussie couple in the group. We swapped news about the moose we'd seen and the reindeer they’d seen.

Had to settle for a panorama taken with the phone.

More roadworks with tunnels being built. One place was making good use of the material taken from the tunnel and was creating a logistics and accommodation centre. From the architect’s images It will look lovely when it's finished, but for now the site sure looks a mess.

Serious roadworks

Driving along enjoying the scenery, something odd caught our attention. Was that some deer on the other side of the road barricade? We turned around and went past again. They hadn't moved. We were starting to think they were fakes. A couple more passes as slowly as we dared on a 90kph road with traffic and realized they were real!

Looked like statues at first

We are in Lapland now. At the entrance to a tunnel off in the distance there were some animals on the road. As we got closer we realised they were reindeer. A herd of about twenty were trotting along the road. Some were wearing bells around their necks. The zoo experience the other day was good, but this was special.

Then later, a small herd.

Through the town of Alta and the terrain is starting to change. We're climbing into more alpine style country - the forests of tall trees are making way for rolling hills covered in low vegetation.

Nullarbor Hills? 

We arrived at Skaidi a little after 2pm and went directly to the hotel to find out if there was a booking for tonight or if there was another hotel in town. No, in both cases. Our booking for tomorrow night is there. Phew! In all our discussions, it turns out there have been a couple of cancellations today and there is a room for us tonight. Hooray! Our plan is back on track. What a relief.   Tomorrow, we go to the Top.