World Wild Adventure in Norway episode 2 Haholmen

Excuse the funny face, here is my next video installment for the first week in norway!

World Wild Adventure in Norway episode 2 from Wandering Wolf Productions on Vimeo.

First Week In Norway (part 2)

CORPORATES
   

On the Docks with my Trak!

 The The first big task that my new job called me to do, was to be involved in facilitating a Corporate adventure weekend!
The millionaire Club of car salesmen and woman for Audi, Volvo and Skoda where coming to celebrate their annual sales. we where to provide a weekend of coastal fun staying on the wonderful island of Håholmen. Kayaking, Motorised RIB tours, Caving and hiking in the coastal mountains, and off course great food and drink!

Lise, Robert, Pauli, Mari, Didrick, Me

the Atlantic Coastal Road

 

The work is very different than I am used to very simple and un-strenuous activities filled with great sights and food. Fun times though a touch boring for my mind, however very interesting business lessons and ideas are learnt. the first day help manage a group of 28 kayakers paddle 2 hours along the stunning Hustadvika coastline, then switch with 26 more and paddle another 2 hours to the Island of Håholmen. That night we ate and awesome BBQ meal and Drank like merry fishes till the early morn! crazy these people love to drink and drink hard, this was also a golden opportunity for me to drink a lot for free and save on the hefty Norwegian prices ($10US for a beer at a bar!). we where mostly all in bed by 3am, except for a hardy few salesmen who didn't got to sleep and where still drinking when we awoke!

Lise

Lunch time

Second day Lise and I took three individuals out sea kayaking for the afternoon, amongst the great little islands in the area. after a quick lunch only one wanted to continue on with me to the open coast and complete a little circumnavigation and then back to the lodge. the other two went back with Lise to the lodge early to recover from there hangover. The rest of the group had headed up into he mountains for caving and a solid ridge line hike!
   

Håholmen
Håholmen, a fishing community worthy of presevation in the Hustadvika bay, has served as a meeting place, harbour, home and workplace for fishermen, sailors, shopkeepers and travellers for hundreds of years, though stopped in the 1960’s. Since 1989, Kari and Ragnar Thorseth have brought new life to the 300-year-old fishing village, Håholmen, and this beautiful, weather-beaten island has once again become an attractive meeting place for people.  The island has an unusually beautiful, natural harbour, well protected from all types of weather.  Around 30 buildings - several of then dating back to the 1700 and 1800s scatter the island and take you back in time!
Ragnar Thorseth, the creator of the wonderfull lodge we stayed at was born in 1948 , he is an adventurer and writer .
Ragnar Thorseth became known as the adventurer for more adventurous trips in small boats. In 1969 he rowed the first man alone from Norway ( Måløy ) to Lerwick on Shetland. In the next decade he traveled including the Arctic Ocean around over the Atlantic and through the Northwest Passage .In 1982 he was part of a snøscoter expedition across the ice to the North Pole was reached 29 april . In the period April 1984 - 1986 Thorseth sailed around the world with "Saga Siglar" . At the end of the 1980s, he and his family spent a winter in the icy wilderness of Kongsfjorden on Svalbard .
In August 2000 he was involved in a serious horseback riding accident.

Prow of a viking ship

  

IS THAT WHALE??

Ragnars Ship in Sydney

looking back at the lodge

The last night was a very formal business dinner and the guides (the dirty hoods we are), had to eat to ourselves up stairs, though we got served an amazing 5 course meal. after the main dish i was so impressed by the  raw Tuna dish we where served that i asked out how they did it. I shouldn't have asked as i was to find out it was WHALE!!! Argh all my Greeny friends please forgive me!!
more drinking that night and the next day was pack up and ship out!

The transport boat

The Crew, Me , Mari, Lise, Trond

Towing the boats home

What a first week in Norway, more adventures to come!

World Wild Adventure in Norway episode 1 Kayak Video

Been working late nights to produce a couple of short videos of Adventures in Norway, here is the first Episode!
I hope you enjoy
J

A World Wild Adventure In Norway: Episode 1 Hustadvika from Wandering Wolf Productions on Vimeo.

First week in Norway (part 1)

Veiw from atop the mountain above Molde

 
MOLDE
A small town located on the west coast of Norway! Molde is a city and municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Romsdal region. Molde is the administrative center of Møre og Romsdal county, the commercial hub of Romsdal, and the host of the bishop of Møre. It started as an old settlement emerging as a trading post in the late Middle Ages. The city continued to grow throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, becoming a center for Norwegian textile and garment industry, as well as the administrative center for the region, and a major tourist destination. After World War II, a lot of the city was rebuilt after major bombing damage.
The city is named after the original settlement on the farmstead of Molde (Old Norse: Moldar). The name is either the plural form of mold which means "fertile soil" or moldr which means "skull" or "mold" (thus in reference to the rounded peaks in Moldemarka). Pronunciation varies between the standard Molde and the rural Molle. A person from Molde will refer to him/herself as a Moldenser

Vis større kart

the View from my Kayak Shed!

                                                                    

  My fleet of Kayaks!!

                                                                                              
I have an amazing area to work in and a big fleet of  12 double kayaks and 3 singles, we will look at what more gear DID needs to get to run Multi day trips and provide top notch trips for the sea kayak connoisseur!

DIDRICK AND KIN

Didrick Ose

 
Didrick is a big man full of laughs and energy, his boys Bendict and Jesper Helped me clean down there old sail boat so I can make repairs on it and hopefully get it out sailing this summer! we will see.

Jesper og Bendict scrapping the Keel

the little Laling sailboat

ADVENTURES
From the moment I landed it was straight to work, talking, walking, driving and seeing all the cool sights DID Adventure uses for trips. My jet lag did catch me out a bit and Didrick found me falling asleep on him as we drove around over the first 4 days as he explained his corporate trips and how he wants to expand into the commercial sea kayak guiding business.

work truck ready for adventure

coastal boat houses (Naust)

Old painting in Yelling Hill

YELLING HILL
This is  an amazing place that DID uses. it is an old stone mansion built into the hill along the coast of Hustadvika. very un assuming from the out side, it is full of awesome old paintings and furniture, it is literally like stepping into Frodo Baggins Hobbit house with tunnels and hidden rooms everywhere. very cool
DID uses it for corporate dinners and conferences, and we may use it for multi day lodge based kayak trips!

one of the buildings at Yelling Hill

Kitchen.

Thomas Berg Hestad is my colleague for the season is an avid base jumper and now wants to get into guiding. He is full of energy and a real Doer!
We where sent out to scout some sea kayaking trips for the coming corporate Millionaires club trip. Thomas had spent little time in a kayak so he was very uncertain about the swells and his back gave him trouble! but he enjoyed it! It was also the first time a got to get the Trak Kayak out on Norwegian waters. The water was cold at this time of year and i really was thankful for the cozy sea sock I got for the Trak.
Sea kayaking here is very awesome, it is not so much about the wildlife as it is about the wild civilisation, there are houses and little fishing villages in some of the most remote and exposed coastal areas out here, and some of the buildings are over 200 years old. The Coast line, though exposed to the Atlantic Ocean and beaten to a pulp in winter, is very mild in the summer season, with an average swell of what appears to be about half a meter. very nice for coastal sea kayak trips. There is also a lot of amazing and unique places to use as accommodation for lodge based trips along the coast, we should be able to make a great trip here for sure!

Thomas and I

My Trak on the road during Portage

Coastal Drizzel!

Stayed tuned for Week 1 part 2

My First Day in Norway

From the Plane

Norway is a purely spectacular and beautiful country and I have yet to find an ugly place here. The kayaking options for white water and sea are endless as well as the mountains to climb, ski and run on.
Ok so I have been a real slacker! 8 weeks in Norway and I am only just now getting a post up about it, Better late than never I guess!
Taking off from where the last post ended:
After a short 30 minute flight to Molde, the plane dropped towards the clouds that blanketed the coast entirely, except for the tall snow capped mountain peaks which reached to the sky like jagged teeth. The sun, which struck a wonderful light across the stark exaggerated view below the plane, disappeared with the sights as the plane dropped through the dark rain clouds. The sights through the window emerged into a wet and dark fjord and the plane landed, with a light bump, upon a damp airstrip next to the ocean. Stepping from the plane I was struck by the smell of ocean and fresh mountain air all mixed into one.



  
In the terminal, my boss Didrick and his two boys Jesper and Bendict where waiting for me. “Hei Hei Jaime, Velkommen to Molde!” stated Didrick with a big Smile and a strong Handshake. Didrick the Owner of DID Adventure is a big strong blonde chap who upon looking at you can’t help but think back to the Viking History of the people here. I am here, at Didrick’s insistence over the last 2 years, to work with him in trying to help develop sea kayaking in Molde and in Norway in general. Sea kayaking, though a popular sport here in Norway, appears to be underdeveloped commercially and is having trouble taking off. I hope I can help though with some ideas from my experiences working as a guide for allot of different companies in New Zealand, Canada, Belize, and Panama.
Loading my remaining stuff into the work truck we drive back to Didrick’s “Sports Farm” as he calls it, here I find my new accommodations in the upstairs of an Octagonal building, with kitchen, washroom and bedroom all for my use and conveniently a door away from the work office. The Farm is a beautiful old place (the main building almost 200 years old), is right near the ocean and conveniently close to the airport, so much so that you would walk across the airstrip to get to the sea, thankfully the airport is not that busy.

DID Sports Farm

That night I had dinner and meet Trine, Didrick’s wife and then Didrick and I sat down to a business meeting until 1 am when my jet lag wouldn’t let me stay awake any more. DID adventures does allot of corporate work and I have arrived just in time for the most busiest part of all that and will be helping out, thus I had allot to learn in 3 days, but for now it was to sleep for me.

To Norway

I have two over weight bags, one (the Trak Kayak) oversized; I am not flying a star alliance flight, with which I am a silver status holder. I am due to owe the airline possibly $150 CA for the bags. I put my big dry bag on the scales; it weighs in at 54lbs, the flight attendant smiles and tells me not to worry about it. “Oh awesome, thank you!” I say with a smile “however this bag”, as I dump the Trak in its bag upon the scales; “Is overweight and over size for sure!”
The flight attendant shakes her head and smiles “you look like a person who places a value on quality of life rather than money, so I won’t charge you!” I look at her with surprise. “I hope I haven’t insulted you? It is a quality i admire!”
“No I am not insulted, thank you Very Much!” I exclaim in surprise.



Kerry and IBarely able to dry my paddling gear off(lots of help thanks to the drier), I awake the day after the Punt ledge paddle fest to pack my bags, load my gear into Kerry’s purple VW van and head for the Comox airport. I have my wonderful encounter with baggage check, say good bye to Kerry and board a plane for Calgary. After a 2 hour layover in Calgary I board a plane to Frankfurt Germany. 
What a wonderful flight it was. We were chasing the sun and I got to see the arctic sea frozen solid stretching out to the horizon. This sight had me in awe of its vast emptiness; I longed to experience walking on that landscape, to feel the bone biting cold, to hear the crisp crunch as I stepped upon the frozen sea. Pieces of land in the form of jagged mountain ranges appeared here and there as we zoomed over Greenland, other than that you couldn’t tell where the sea ended or the landed started (or vice versa). I could imagine seeing polar bears and dogsled teams as tiny specs on the desolate white sheet that lay out around me thousands of feet down.
Glimpsing out every now and again form my movie, I got to see the sea change back to liquid and then be interrupted by the less frozen island of Iceland. Little villages tucked into remote bays on the northern coast sparked my imagination and desire to explore. What is life like in that town? How do they get there? What do the people do for work? What is that beautiful big surf beach like to camp on? What would it be like to kayak into the many coves and explore the exaggerated and stark shoreline? I wish to return to these places I have now flown over, to explore them on the ground and by water, to meet the people and experience the culture. However until then I have my adventure, I am on my way to Norway.
Trak in the Luggage RackAfter a slight miss hap in Frankfurt, where I left my 4 piece kayak paddle shaft on the plane, I got to my connecting flight to Oslo Norway just in time as they where closing the doors. A wonderful lady Michal helped me contact security who found the Paddle pieces I left and got them on a transport bus right to my terminal, with Michal’s help I got through the big line up for security check quick smart. However security wasn’t too happy about the two carbon fibre poles I was carrying and Michal had a big discussion with them in German explaining that I had flown through the USA and Canada with those pieces as carry on, so they eventually let the poles and I through. I hit the floor running on the other side of the X-ray machine, and squeezed through my gate.
I am now only 30 minutes out from Oslo and arriving in the new country that will be my home for the next 3 or so months, I am super excited, and can’t wait to explore!

J