Bye, bye Lofoten Islands. Hello Estonia.

It has been an action-packed week since we lasted posted a message. We'll try to give you the highlights, and won't dwell too much on the lowlights.

We continued our biking trip from Leknes to Ramberg, and then from Ramberg down to A (pronounced ahhhh). Leknes was the last "large" centre that we were in so we stocked up on groceries, including lots of Nugatti (Norweigan Nutella), and headed south. We figure that the trailor weighed close to 100 pounds, which was brutal given the hilly terrain. Kevin was a trooper and managed to pull the trailor for the 45+ km per day. The trailor drew a lot of attention from locals and other tourists. At one point a German tourist was giggling and taking photos of it. I guess baskets are more the thing over here.

The tunnel ended up being a breeze, although it was freaky to bike underneath the ocean. You could hear the waves above you. Thank goodness Norway is a bike friendly place, the tunnel was lit and there was a wide sidewalk so we didn't have to ride in the traffic. And, no trolls.

We arrived in Ramberg on Friday night and it was hot. We even went for a dip in the ocean - we made it up to our knees before our legs turned numb and we had to get out. We watched the sun near the horizon around 1:30am before it began it rise again. It is the only place either of us have been where there is as much activity at midnight as there is in the middle of the afternoon.

Our trip from Ramberg down to A was picturesque, probably the visual highlight of the Lofoten Islands. We would highly recommend this spot to anyone interested in the outdoors. Even though the weather turned and the arctic wind began to blow, it was still an enjoyable ride.

After a cold and rainy hiking day in A, we boarded the ferry to the penultimate island, Vaeroy. The ferry was a gong-show and should have taken this as a sign to not go, but the chance to see Puffins drove us to continue. Vaeroy is a desolute place, we're not sure why anyone would chose to live there. Our poor experience is likely linked to the miserable weather we had - we hiked for 7 hours in driving rain and sleet the one day. Karen was wearing 3 windproof jackets and two pairs of gloves and was still freezing. Thank goodness for the hand warmers.

There was nothing to do on the 18 km2 island. There was only one store, but it closed by 5 pm, and other than that there was nothing to do. We went on to do an 11 hour hike on our last day. It was OK, but it was still cold (maybe 5 degrees in the sun) and the arctic wind never stopped blowing. The kicker was, there were no Puffins. We did see a few sea eagles, but that was hardly worth the effort to get to the sea bird colony, which had no birds.

Needless to say, we were happy when it was time to get on the ferry and head back to Bodo, on the mainland. We caught the ferry at 10 pm and arrived in Bodo around 4 am, which gave us lots of time to catch our flight back to Stockholm. We had a nice afternoon of shopping in Stockholm and managed to stay awake, despite the very little sleep we had on the rough ferry ride.

We boarded the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia around 5pm. It was the first time that Kevin had been on a cruise-type ship, and the first for Karen since she worked on Princess Cruises. It was a bit surreal. The highlight was sailing out of Stockholm, enjoying the sun and the scenery, while listening to an Estonian sing Oasis "wonderwall." It doesn't get much better than that. :)

And for the stockfish, not only was it tolerable, it was good. It made a perfect snack on our long hikes.