Day 12: Ferry, Artic circle, rain and a heartwarming end

https://www.strava.com/activities/9445285621

We woke up very early. The tent was shaking a bit but the wind had decreased from the previous day. We ate breakfast and packed our things pretty quickly so we managed to take our first ferry of the day at 9:00am. The ferry was quite short, so short and smooth that we actually did not notice that it was moving and it had arrived on the other side. We were comfortably sitting inside the boat, luckily Maria took her head out and noticed cars onboarding, so we rushed outside and managed to leave the boat just in time. It would have been quite a delay to go back and forth one more time! 

We started to bike until our next ferry in Jeitvik. The road was really nice, it was sunny and quite warm, the motivation of the team was very high.

We were entertained by some rain deers that crossed in front of us.

We reached the next ferry at 11:40 and we had already biked 30km. It was a much better start compared to the day before where we started to bike only after 11:30.

During our ferry cruise we crossed the Artic Circle, it was indicated by a nice sculpture on the coast that can be seen on the picture below: 

We went back on the road, stopped next to a supermarket to have lunch and continued our journey. 

The rain started and followed us the entire afternoon. We could not find anywhere to stop so we continued to the next supermarket and we reached it in the early evening after biking almost 90km. We were completely soaked, cold, tired and with a big problem to solve: Where to sleep?

The supermaeket had a café and depite that it was closed, we saw that three bikepackers were sitting inside, so we entered. They were facing the same question, where to sleep. We started thinking about our options. The first one was to bike 30km more to the next village, under the rain and with some elevation, it was clearly too much. Second option, put the tent outside, completely soaked, clearly not a good option either. We were a bit desperate.

Maria started to talk with the café owners, a couple from Argentina and asked them for advice. They offered their help and told us that we could stay at their place for the night, what a blessing!

We were really humbled by their immense generosity, so we biked to their house with the three other bikepackers, Armin, Michael and Patrick from Germany. We were welcomed into the house by the kids of the family and we were offered to have a nice and warm shower. We enjoyed delicious sandwiches that we bought at the café and could then enjoyed the evening in the house. It felt so nice. The picture below was taken from the house:

The three German guys are doing the same route as us, but biking from South to North, so we could share our respective experiences with the road and the nice places where to stop. We then shared a coup of coffee with Gretel and Facu, the Argentinian couple that finally was back home after a long day of work at the cafe. It was a very heartwarming moment. We took a picture on the terrace to remember that moment.

We could enjoy the view and fall asleep on the couch.

We want to say huge thanks to this Argentinian family for their generosity. It is amazing to meet with people that opens the door of their home with such easiness and a smile. The sign hanging next to their entrance door couldnt have been better placed.

More pictures from this special day: