Next stop: Svolvaer

August of 2007. Three friends carrying backpacks and an interrail pass. Everything perfectly planned: Barcelona-Copenhagen, south Sweden, Norwegian coast, north Finland and down until Helsinki to get the plane back home. No time to improvise. Almost no time to breathe. But, suddenly, a setback changes the schedule.

It is on an old wooden train that joins the cities of Myrdal and Fläm where we met the person who was about to deviate our journey. She was a Spanish journalist who had to write about Norway for the magazine she worked for. She was the one who almost obligated us to go to the Lofoten Islands. We felt that we had to go there even if it meant spending some days less in other cities. But the Islands were quite far North; we had to cross the Polar Circle. So, it wasn’t until we arrived in Bodo when we could take a ferry in the direction of Svolvaer, capital of Lofoten Islands.
The breeze of the sea caressing our faces, the codfish smell, the looks of the other travelers wandering nervously up and down the ship trying to guess what they were going to find at the islands… There were signs everywhere telling us that we had taken the right decision.
We arrived just in time to catch the only bus in the city, which was also the only way of getting to the camp (besides hitchhiking). Finally we got there and I cannot describe the feeling when we saw the wooden bungalows by the fjords. It was an impressive image with the best soundtrack: absolute silence. We felt really small surrounded by huge mountains, a blue cloudless sky, and two endless fiords. The next morning, the campground owner suggested we go with him to sail around one of the fiords (Trollfjord) in his boat. We were the only human existence around the place. After a while he challenged us to jump to the sea… and we jumped! Twice! The water was freezing, so much that I couldn’t breathe until I got up to the boat. Nevertheless, I knew that this was the only chance to do it and I wasn’t going to miss it. I just wanted to live every second we were spending on that island.

After this experience, I learnt that even if one has everything perfectly planned, it is really important to save some space for improvisation.