BBQ!

Tonight Connie and Trond invited me over for BBQ Norwegian style! Which consists of a fire with a grill balanced on it on logs, reindeer steak (and big steaks!) and home grown potatoes in a frying pan, with a few Norwegian beers brewed from the Northernmost brewery in the world (everything in Norway is the best, biggest, northernmost, coldest, oldest... Or whatever makes it best, or that is what the Norwegians say!!!) sitting on logs and reindeer skin with 14 huskies sat around watching and my dogs looking lovingly at the reindeer steaks!

They are both very experienced mushers having raced the finnmarkslopet (the northernmost dog sled race in the world (are you seeing a pattern here!) Finnie managed to break 2 collars today pulling against her lead to try and get to the huskies, we have now borrowing one of Connie’s husky puppies collars – she will not break that one! I also showed them my amazing pop up tent and my sleeping bag suit (check the photo!) – they laughed at me (stupid English women with her new things) but wait until the snow comes, I will be inside my tent as it only takes 40 seconds to put up while they are still trying to find their poles! Then we will see who is the stupid one!

I am also starting to meet lots of the locals, the people who live next door and own a snowmobile safari business, the farmer up the road, all who speak a little English and are very patient with my Norwegian, but help me a lot to speak it and especially help with the pronunciation. They all say to me “Du er en gal engelsk jente’ - You are a crazy English girl!  

We had a little bit of the northern lights again last night, but only a bit, hopefully in the next few months there will be much more!

I had to move out of my cabin tonight as we have a film crew here from a big Norwegian TV show, a reality show about following contestants as they have to travel from the south to the north of Norway and have to do challenges along the way, so the crew get to sleep in the cabins, have food from the professional chef they have traveling with them, use the hot tubs, have coffee in the laavu (Norwegian Sami version of the Wigwam/ teepee tent that we have in Gargia) while the contestants have to sleep in the tent!

Off to bed now, in my very cool sleeping suits (those Norwegians will learn!)

A xxx

PS – came up with a great idea tonight, having a mini wind turbine on the dog sled and have heated handle bars, stereo and coffee cup heater! I reckon that could definitely take off!!!