Hammerfest

We all had a good sleep in our rough camp for the night.  Matt told me that the rain woke him up - I was amazed.  I am on the top bunk so very near the roof and slept through it - in fact I had the best sleep of the holiday - and when I woke up I didn’t want to open my eyes.  I tell you bunk beds in a motor home is the way to go - although, of course I do miss a night time cuddle!

A room with a view

We started the day slowly and once ready headed towards Olderfjord where I took over the driving from Matt.  We dipped into a souvenir shop to see what we could find.  I found a patch for Honningsvåg which was good - but why do they sell them 50km from Honningsvåg and not in Honningsvåg itself?  Anyway, I then drove us to Hammerfest - it was quite uneventful.  Can’t say I enjoy driving the motor home - it is tall, wide, I’m never sure exactly how wide it is so get nervous when a big lorry comes my way and that’s without having to drive on the other side of the road and having to change gears with the wrong hand.  However, I am determined to get over it and get to the point where I can drive it without being nervous - it’s my holiday challenge.  

There were plenty of reindeer on the side of the road, in the road etc again.  We have quickly gone from being very excited to see reindeer to dismissing them.  They are basically the ’sheep’ of the tundra.  They hang around in herds, but believe it or not seem to be even dimmer than sheep!  They don’t seem at all bothered by traffic.  Today there was a calf in the road, and it just sat there and watched me as I had to drive around it.  If you honk your horn at them, they tend to panic and run - but can continue to keep running in the road.  Their antlers are huge, so they could damage the van if we get them wrong!  At least sheep are small enough to man handle, reindeer aren’t!

The symbol of Hammerfest

We arrived in Hammerfest around 1pm.  Just in time to see a cruise ship leave.  Now we were looking forward to Hammerfest because the guide book said it was an interesting town (it said Alta wasn’t worth a visit and we found it fun and it said Nordkapp was overpriced and not worth visiting - we though it definitely worth a visit).  We eventually found the motor home campsite - not a campsite - part of a car park where there is electric hook up.  There were supposed to be toilets, showers, laundry etc in a building nearby, but we walked round and round and couldn’t find them.  We came here to go to the polar bear museum.  It is a Saturday so we assumed it would be open.  Oh no - it closed at 12.  Humpfh.  We continued looking for the showers etc, but came to the conclusion they were in the polar bear museum, so we gave up.  We then looked around the town - it isn’t great - lots of empty shops.  We got excited when we saw a Peppe’s Pizza - we have cooked ourselves every night, but found out about Peppe’s pizza where you can get a massive pizza for a ‘reasonable price’ so we thought we would do it tonight - no luck - the place was very much closed, permanently closed!  It took us about 10 minutes to go round the town and decide that it wasn’t going to be too much fun.  However, we had paid for our parking space so we were going to stay.  We went to a supermarket to buy some food and beer and then we spent 15 mins filling the water tank up with 2 watering cans (the piece of hose the rental company gave us is so short it makes it pretty much impossible to use).  

Beautiful sunset

Then we heated up the water so we could have showers. Matt went first, he did his shower in one, the bathroom obviously couldn’t cope and as a result water leaked onto the van floor - good way to wash the floor and use up kitchen roll.  Oh hum.  I went next and did it in bursts - the bathroom didn’t flood - success.  Tom also managed it.  We then settled down to an afternoon in the van.  We have planned the next part of our journey.  We are thinking to head towards Narvik where there is a polar park and a train which you can get into Sweden: 2 long driving days and we should be there.

We had roast chicken for tea - the supermarkets here tend to have delis which sell them and the one in Hammerfest luckily was no exception.  Get this a whole roast chicken was £4 - we weren't expecting that - what great value.  We snaffled it up with potato salad and sweetcorn - a great dinner made with very little input - great for holiday.  

Our mate Adolf the cook from the Fram

As the sun was shining after tea, we decided we had to go out for a walk, so we got togged up (it was still quite cold) and went out.  The place was looking lovely because of the sun, but both of us felt a little uneasy - there were 'odd' characters hanging about, Matt had noticed people giving us stares - he wasn't sure if he was being paranoid or not, but he had left his computer in the van, and was regretting it.  Hammerfest certainly has the feeling of a frontier town.  We think it is on the way down as well - so many empty shops and restaurants - it had the feel of a ghost town.  

However, we carried on, we found a path, known locally as the zig zag path which went straight up a mountain. The view from the top was wonderful.  There was a restaurant at the top of the hill - all the tables and chairs were set up nicely - but there was once again no sign of life.  We think it probably closed a while ago.  Shame.  We took some photos and walked down again.  We returned to the van (all was OK) and then spent the best part of an hour outside watching the comings and goings of the port and Tom threw plenty of stones into the water.  We watched the sun set - it was lovely - maybe this town isn't so bad after all!