The landscape is amazingly beautiful and in what appears to be a blink of an eye, we reach Kristiansund, an oil-extracting town that reaches over 3 islands with stunning houses looking towards the sea.
It is mid-day; we start to feel hungry and start using the camera tele-zoom as a restaurant detector... Animals ignoring the danger, still show up for a photo session.
220 kms after Trondheim, we finally find a restaurant, we are happy and this one has a plus: it looks over the famous Atlantic Road. We eat deliciously, and immediately transform into lizards digesting under the sun.
Just before leaving the restaurant, we meet an Austrian woman who is also there with her motorcycle. She has spent her last two years striving for the motorcycle driver's license just to drive over this Atlantic Road. Today she has finally reached her goal! Congratulations!!!! She has planned to go up and down the Atlantic road for the whole day.
As most parts of Norway so far, the Atlantic road, this famous stretch of 8km, is incredibly scenic connecting 17 islets between Vevang and Averoya like a sea-serpent .
Miji is a bit disappointed, later he'll claim that it is because there were no sheep sleeping on the road, although the truth is that he forgot to buy a sticker for the motorcycle that would testify he was once there...
We continue our trip. Norway keeps showing us beautiful landscapes to the right and left.
And let's not forget the ferry-hopping... that has become a daily sport.
Next highlight is the Trollstigen (troll’s way). It’s a mountain road composed of 11 hairpin bends in a 1:12 gradient, many times in a single lane. Miji is in seventh heaven. He’s dancing with the road and his bike, leans into the smooth turns, accelerates to pass campers, one after the other. The road is bordered by several dramatic waterfalls. The highest is 180m high, called the Stigfossen.
Arrived on top, Isabel jumps off the bike to breath calmly again and to quickly role up the biking pants that seem to have melted with the skin. The Stigfossen begins here at the Troll's nipple (Miji's daily troll-joke) and can be easily accessed, so hopp! Feet naked and a short walk through the accessible part of Stigfossen.
After having cooled down (Isa water-cooled, Miji air-cooled) and appreciated excessively the view, we attack the descent to the Reinheimen National Park, which luckily for Isabel, sadly for Miji, isn’t very steep and the curves are wider. And still, one waterfall after the other is running down next the road, just beautiful!
Uff, one last ferry to go. The ferry is not there, but we have seen so much today that having to wait for the ferry is a bliss. We enjoy speaking to an Italian caravan-driver about northern food and its funny taste while at the same time we watch Norwegian youth fish two fish in 15 minutes! Despite the loud protest of our Italian friend and Miji, the fisherman throws both of the fish back into the Storfjorden. We first thought, the fisherman was a local and for some reason, threw back the catch of the day. But he was waiting - just like us- for the ferry to come and was just doing some very efficient casual sport-fishing... what a "muchacho malo".
We approach our destination, Geiranger, but first, one more gift for Miji: the Eagle’s road: an almost sheer slope in 11 hairpin bends along the narrow Geirangerfjord, which is emerald green and is nourished on each side by steep waterfalls: just spectacular.
We arrive at 21h at the hotel, hypnotized by all the beauty we have seen today. To top everything of: our hotel room has the perfect view over the fjord, we admire how the sun sets and then force ourselves to sleep…
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