Norway: Guaranteed Fun (with the right attitude)

I think a lot of our Norway vacation was a compromise between our physiology, Norwegian weather, and/or our expectations.

We signed up to go snowshoeing with a guy from Finland, and soon discovered that his pace of snowshoeing, coupled with his desired trip duration, was beyond our capabilities. I, for one, learned that without the heat provided by my battery-powered gloves [and coupled with the sweating from our high-energy-output pace], I could no longer keep my fingers working. I truly was unable to feel my fingers, which made it really difficult to have any hand dexterity--if you can't tell where your fingers are, then you can't properly direct them to where they need to be. I think I may have freaked out our guide, because after seeing how stiff and red my hand digits were, he not only gave me his gloves, but also the keys to the car so that I could warm back up [which, btw, is painful] while he continued with the rest of the group. Mark accompanied me on the trek back, and I gotta say that snowshoeing was so much more fun for the both of us at a slower pace. 

Then there was the snowmobiling, which came with a conundrum for me. The snowmobile had heated handles (!!!) for the driver, but I was at this point still struggling with how-to-see-with-glasses-that-fog-up. Mark and I were on the same snowmobile, so I could have handed it all over to him, but actually I was a huge fan of those heated handles, and a pretty good driver considering I just had to follow the person in front of me.

And finally, there was the reindeer adventure, which was supposed to have multiple Sami guides talking to us about their dress/culture after we fed their semi-domesticated reindeer herd [think of them like cats--they tolerate human interference, but don't exactly do what you want/need them to do]. But,

because the weather was, in the words of the sole Sami guide there, "shit", all of his colleagues stayed home to avoid the slushy freezing snow. This absence didn't dampen the experience much, because we still got to feed reindeer and, funnily enough, eat reindeer stew. The Circle of Life in the Arctic Circle. I think that's what they should call their enterprise.

C'est la vie