Other than prepare for our upcoming hiking trip, we didn't achieve much in Stockholm. Mike mostly spent the time sleeping and I didn't have the enthusiasm for anything except putting in a token appearance at the bar across the road from the hostel. I did manage to smash my head quite badly against one of the bunks, but stemmed the bleeding pretty fast. We also managed to see Transformers, a movie I had heard a lot of good reports of, apparently from people who saw a different movie than we did. Come the Saturday evening, we boarded our 18 hour train for Abisko in Swedish Lappland. Alana (Mike's ex-girlfriend) and her friend Lauren were to join the train in Uppsala, not far north of Stockholm. It was a long trip, but I had ensured sleep by acquiring a Valium from a Mexican prescription-drug fiend in our hostel room. It certainly did the job, but I felt pretty awful after waking the next day and probably won't try that strategy again. We didn't arrive in Abisko until the afternoon, so we crashed at the hostel there overnight in preparation for beginning our hikes the next day.
We awoke late on the Monday morning and then Mike spent some time mercilessly repacking the girls' ludicrously overpacked bags. I packed very light, anticipating good facilities at the huts along the way. We eventually got underway at something like 2pm, but the late start wasn't a problem since there's daylight 24 hours a day. To ensure good morale, Mike had acquired a team uniform for us in New York City:
I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but my camera took a knock in Ireland and doesn't work. More accurately, the shutter button doesn't work. The rest of the camera works great, but having no shutter button makes taking photos a bit tricky. I'm therefore reliant on Mike at the moment for my photos.
We walked through relatively flat terrain the first day. The path was very well defined, and through boggy areas makeshift boardwalks had generally been constructed. A German guy later told us that Norwegians referred derisively to Swedish walking trails as "motorways". We walked a long way, though - around 35km, all the way to Alesjaure, the second "hut" along the Kungsleden, or King's Trail. They call them huts, but really they're hostels, complete with bunk beds, pillows, blankets, cooking facilities, a shop and so forth. Weather was excellent throughout the day, bright and sunny, right up until we reached Alesjaure at past midnight.
The next day Lauren felt a little ill, so we decided to have a rest day. Alana, Mike and I took advantage of the sauna.The idea was that after sweating for a while, you ran out and down a hill and jumped in the river. The problem was that the hill was too treacherous to run down, and the river was shallow and carpeted with very slippery stones at the point where you were supposed to jump in, so it wasn't really possible.
Next day we left the Kungsleden to head towards our next hut, Vistasvagge. It was an 18km walk through a valley lined with imposing mountains and even a small glacier or two. There were some patches of bad weather, but it wasn't too bad overall. The lowlight of the day was Mike leading us down the wrong path and us having to traipse across a swamp to correct our course, whereupon Lauren and I were both stung by some insect. I think it might be some sort of deer fly. It materialises out of the swamp, lands on your lower leg, bites you, and flies off. The whole process takes about half a second. Then the surrounding area goes red and stings like crazy for a few minutes. Justice was inflicted about half an hour later when Mike got stung twice after we got back on the path. After we reached Vistasvagge, Alana spent the night getting taught magic tricks by some 11 year old kid, while the rest of us just relaxed.
The third day hike started off with miserable weather, but things cleared up a bit after a while. We had to get up at 6am because the plan was to hike 20km and catch a boat a further 12km down to Nikkolotka at 12:30. The hike was unfortunately through some pretty boring territory. Towards the end the weather closed in again and the boat ride was incredibly cold, as it was like being blasted with 40kph winds while saturated and cold. Things didn't improve when we got to Nikkolotka and discovered that we had the time of our bus to Kiruna wrong and it had already left. We had a hire car to pick up, so we all hitchhiked into Kiruna and reconvened at the hire place. After discovering we'd hired a manual Toyota Aygo, we headed back to Abisko armed with pizza and wine and spent the night in a hostel there.
I'll write about Norway later, but for now it's just important to mention that I have started suffering from travel fatigue. I think visiting more new places just because I can would be a waste now, so after we return the car in Stockholm, I plan to go to Helsinki to hang out with some locals Mike knows, and then call it a day and fly back to Adelaide from there.
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