Day 131. Kirkenes weather and rest day
Posted by: James on May 11, 2009Distance 0km | Time 0hrs | Ascent 0m | Descent 0m
Today I got up early as I had to action everything I had been thinking about over the weekend. After breakfast I went out into sunny Kirkenes. The first job was to go round the sports shops and see if I could find some smoke flares.
This proved to be very difficult. I went from shop to shop but nobody could really help. It seems you needed a license to sell them and nobody had the license. Eventually after 3 hours I gave up.
I then went back to a sports shop and bought a petrol stove¸ a couple of bottles and some clean petrol. This stove was heavier than the gas stove, which I will also take, but burns far hotter without giving out condensation. Its heat output is 3000 watts so it should warm the tent in no time and dry clothing quickly. I now have my bigger Macpac Olympus tent which is heavier than the Macpac Minaret but gives me much more room. It is also an older and better quality tent.
After a few other items I then went food shopping. It took a few hours to buy all the food and cart it back to the hotel. In the end I only bought food for 9 days. It was still a considerable pile. Back at the hotel I packed it up into 24 hour packs so each evening in the tent I would open another pack which would contain dinner, the next day’s breakfast and lunch. This way if I took the first day’s lunch I would be able to be out for 10 days. I packed it into 3 dry bags with each one weighing about 6 kg. I had not been too careful with weight and volume, as I usually keep each day to less than a kg.
I phoned to confirm my transport again and all that seemed to be in order. I had already been to the Hurtigruten ferry terminal and paid for the bike to return to Mehamn with this ferry. I would use another bike to get to Grense Jakobselv.
Then it was off to the post office to see how much I could pack into my rucksack. It seemed I could send up to 25 kilos which was more than I was expecting. This was good news as I could send everything I did not want back to Oslo in one go.
In the evening I went to have another pizza. I heard the staff at the pizzeria speaking Kurdish so I threw a few Kurdish words in myself. They were surprised and wanted to know why I could speak a few words. I told them that some 25 years ago I had spent a couple of summers with some Kurdish pastoralists as they moved around the mountains of south east Turkey in their black tents and herds of sheep and goats. When I came to pay they said it was free.
Back at the hotel there was more paperwork to do but I managed to get to bed before midnight. I had pretty much everything in hand and tomorrow I could spend the day packing the drybags and moving everything from the hotel down to the locked store which Stein at Kimek had made available.
It had been quite a tiring day. There was a lot of walking about and a lot of decision making in the shops. There were too many options which caused some dithering and mental juggling.