Varanger NSR Day 2.4

Our last stop on the NSR was Ekkerøy Bird Cliff. We drove through a lot of rain, but once again we were lucky it had stopped by the time we got there! Now these are the largest birding cliffs in Europe so I was excited to see the birds! Apparently a ton is Kittiwakes breed there, but we found out today they leave in August…so we saw some cormorants and up above in the plants/rocks we saw some snow buntings flying around (they were so bright white when flying!). We also went by an old fort. So disappointing bird wise, but it was really a gorgeous walk! It was on to of the cliffs and so pretty! Very pink and green and saw a bit of a rainbow in the distance on the horizon! And on the way back to the car we saw a tundra vole! It was so quick we only saw it for a second!

Then on to finish our drive and the weather turned gorgeous! Sunny and hard to see with the glare reflecting off the water. The water today was also a gorgeous color! All day it was a light green blue which was so pretty, then this afternoon a bit darker, but still gorgeous! We headed over to Finland again to spy on that grocery store and it was so much better than the last one we went to! We found lots of things to try, some seitans, some cheese my friend said was good, some puddings or something she said to try, all the things! It wasn’t that far out of the way and I am glad we stopped! The border there is also the northernmost point of the EU and Finland which I didn’t realize until we saw the sign! So that was fun! And again the people in the grocery store were super friendly and said hi and smiled. So nice! As compared to the one we went to here in Norway where everyone just stopped and blocked the aisles to talk to people and would just look at you and not move…or when we went to pay the lady in front of us had one thing and once she paid she would not move so we could get our things…Finland was so much nicer! Really I don’t remember Norway being bad, I think it was just Vardø where the people were odd and just did whatever.

And now we are camped by this bridge which is pretty nice! And we got a nice sunset that lasted forever! Really all day the horizon had color - orangey red like the sun was starting to rise/set which is still so strange! Like sunrise/sunset all day! In some of the photos in the first/second post today you can see it - especially by the bird blind. They were taken at 10 or later and sunrise was 5:45! So that was fun. Tomorrow we head on to see what else we can see!Read more