Gerainger is a UN World Heritage Site, nestled at the very end of Gerainger Fjord between towering mountains. Cataracts pour off the walls surrounding the town and a torrential river pours out of the mountains into the fjord . Alan and I signed up for a kayaking trip in the fjord and disembarked early on Wednesday morning, July 18. A tender took us to the town dock where we were met by a guide who took us around the small harbor to the put in point.
Gerainger has a camping ground beside the small docking area and it was full of camping vehicles and tents. There is a toilet and wash room for the campers and it was full of folks washing up after breakfast. The camper vans ranged from small, primitive truck-bed style ones to larger and more sophisticated versions, complete with TV satellite dishes. Our guide wryly noted that the town had provided 2 or 3 toilet facilities and then promptly permitted upwards of 100 vehicles and campers to use the grounds.
Our crowd included experienced kayakers and total tyros, so the multinational group of guides spent a good deal of time explaining how kayaks work, how to paddle and how to avoid tipping over. We all donned skirts to keep the steady rain out of the boats and after much jostling we all managed to get our crafts into the water.
The perspective of a fjord from water level is completely different than from the deck of a large cruise ship. Alan and I found a rhythm, he in front and me in back steering as well as paddling. The guides took us out to the first turn in the fjord, and as we came around the point we caught ou first glimpse of the Seven Sisters waterfall. There has been a record amount of snow and rainfall in this are this year. The result is a spectacular display of waterfalls thundering down the fjord walls. We lingered a little bit at the far end of our trip soaking in the view. As we did, a very large cruise ship from Genoa hove into sight and glided into its anchorage. We were forced to gather together and wait until it had settled. Our little kayaks bobbed in its wake. We could feel the rumble of its huge anchor as it slipped into the water and the chains rattled down. These fjords are hundreds of meters deep, although at this end it is probably much shallower. But it seemed like an awful lot of chain tumbled out of the big ship until it was steadied.
The entire landscape of this region is very much like New Zealand's West Coast. I found that hiking in the steady rain also was very much like our tramping in NZ. The trail rapidly became too slippery to navigate alone, so after several slips and falls I perched on a bare outcropping, ate the food I'd slipped from the breakfast buffet on board, and soaked in the rain and the scenery. I had to scramble a bit back down. When I finally returned to the town it was overwhelmed with passengers from the newly arrived cruise ship, swarming with mostly Italian tourists.
Before returning to the ship I tried the soft ice cream I'd read about in my guide book. Wow! This is real ice cream, not the ersatz Dairy Queen chemical concoction. Coated with cocoa powder it made a wonderful treat for me as I sat on a cafe porch out of the rain and watched the fjord and the tenders chugging back and forth to the 2 ships anchored there. I waited until the very last tender for Veendam before heading back to the ship.
We left shortly after and it seemed as if every passenger on our ship was out on the various decks to watch our passage back out. We'd arrived in the middle of the night, so for most of us it was the first chance we'd had to see the cliffs and waterfalls. Cameras bloomed on deck as we swiveled from one astounding view to the next. The ship gracefully turned to follow the twisty
fjord until it emerged into a much larger channel and headed back out to the ocean.
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