Figure 8 On A Bike

July 9th started off on Senja with a slow morning and a slow uphill. We happened to see Bent driving in (he is easy to spot in a conspicuous neon green zombie apocalypse SUV) as we slowly pedaled back up the tunnel. After the tunnel there was still more hill, we made it up a pretty long hill and at the top we talked to some other bike packers from Switzerland who were battling the same flies we'd fought the other day. They looked like they had been doing this for a while and were very friendly. There was a lovely ride downhill with views of Segla Mountain and then another tunnel. Views of the other side of Segla mountain

We left Tromsø slowly. Definitely were delaying some goodbyes with a long breakfast and more rounds of tea and coffee. Some readers may know that Ben and I tried to rid ourselves of caffeine addiction before we went on this trip. That is out the window at this point. Cristobal is far too good at caffeine preparation between being Chilean and thus maté, being married to a Welsh woman and thus tea, and living in Norway and thus coffee. Leaving Tromsø we had to tackle the big hill to get to the other side of the city...I had to push. My excuse was I saw another guy pushing his bike...so I do what the Norwegians do. We made it out of town without any extra stops and head on our way. The Eurovelo 1 route had some construction on it so we detoured along the coast. We weren't too upset by this change as it removed a lot of elevation gain. We also got to check out some ancient petroglyphs which was pretty neat. Susan coming up the bridge out of Tromsø

Waiting for us in Tromsø were our friends Ellie and Cristobal. Ellie is actually from Wales in the UK, but Susan met her while they were both teaching English in Punta Arenas, Chile; Ellie met her husband Cristobal there as well, and somehow they've now moved about as far away from the southern tip of Chile as you can get on a globe. They were out working when we arrived but left us a key to get in and an adorable welcome message, which worked out really well because it gave us time to clean up a little. When you haven't seen someone for 7 years you probably don't want your smell to be the first thing they notice! Life's too short for bad maps