Muh. I want my blog to be as fancy as Stina's!! And Erna's. I haven't even put in a link to their blogs. I am an evil woman.

Spent the day, after a bigtime night out, taking this Icelandic guy who's been here working for a while on a scooter trip to Kapp Linne (you are forgiven if you don't know what or where that is). The weather was perfect and I won a bet over whether a black spot in the distance was a log on the coast or a seal on the sea-ice. Of course it was a log, and I'm headed for the pub now to claim my prize.

Yesterday evening I was invited to dinner with three of my workmates, after a long but good day at work. We had the most brilliant time, laughed our arses off and afterwards went out to Huset (the nightclub here in town, actually a hamburger joint and a coffee shop that turns into a nightspot at weekends) where we tried to teach half of Longyearbyen to dance the Safari-dance. My first party night for almost half a year, would you believe that??!?!?!?!

Can you believe that they shot a scene for the new James Bond-movie here on Svalbard, without bringing Pierce Brosnan over, or a Bond-girl (for the guys...). Uforskammat, det!

Easter seems to be bringing in storms over Svalbard. Right now the wind howls and the air is full of snow. Last year there was also a full-blown storm here at Easter, maybe it is some kind of tradition around here?? A big tent we had out in Tempelfjorden last season was torn away with the wind and found bundled up on the sea ice 1 km from where it stood before the storm, I wonder if anything similar will happen this year.

I know I've been very lazy writing e-mails the last few weeks, have been having some problems with the computer (it freezes if I try to have several windows open at the same time etc.). Don't worry (or get mad at me!!!), everything's just fine!

Hmmmm, nothing much to say. It must be the exhaust from the scooters... at least even a well-trained brain tends to get a bit numb up here and focus only on snow conditions, the latest polar bear stories, and how the sea ice is doing. You can't even buy Newsweek or Time here, but Se og hør, Her og nå, Elle og Glamour (!!!) are sold all over the place. I'm not sure I want to know what that tells you about the mentality of people living here (or those running the shops).

The trip to the East Coast was fantastic, but shitcold. We didn't have a thermometer but suspect the temperature to have dropped below -35 on the sea ice on the East coast. Were all half-frozen, especially as the wind picked up on the way over the ice fields going back. The windchill was terrible!!! But, who cares about cold when in a place like this? Everything white, it's all about shape and light. I had this eerie feeling I was in space. Coming to think of it, the similarities between Svalbard in the winter and space are greater than the similarities between Svalbard in the winter and downtown Oslo.

The next day Sigmund (another guide) and I got to do another trip to check out conditions, a really long one. The highlight was when we drove up along the Fridtjov-glacier, a spectacular glacier who had a surge a few years ago and is totally crevasse-ridden. The scenery is absolutely fantastic and the drive was an easy one, apart from us having to dig and sweat for an hour in a steep snowfilled hill for getting the sledge with the emergency equipment up. We tried everything we'd been tought to do in such situations but nothing worked (we have new scooters now who simply are not as powerful as the ones we had before, but they are 4-stroke (like a car engine) so they are much better for the environment, and for your ears!), until Sigmund used his mountain-climbing skills and rigged a lever-system... very clever indeed! I'm always learning something new up here, almost every day.

If everything goes according to plan, tomorrow I'll join some other guides on a trip to the East Coast. Maybe we'll see a polar bear!!!!

Today it was only -27 Celcius. Still haven't broken the record. Must do better.

Uha, in Norway again. Icecold Svalbard!

It was a long journey. Santiago - Buenos Aires - Paris (where I had time to leave the airport and take a short trip into the city...) - London - Oslo (where I spent the night on a bench at the airport, discussing the Israel/Palestinia-conflict with a Syrian - guess whose side he was on!) - Tromsø - Longyearbyen. The winter became more and more prominent the further north I went, and on Svalbard it was "only" -25 Celsius, compared with the -30 they'd had the day before. Ouch, I thought my face would fall off in one piece. 55 degrees is quite a leap in two days, isn't it?

Probably won't do much updating from now on, as it's all work and work again. However, maybe I'll put in some pictures later, but first I have to earn the money to develop my films from S-America (I "only" have 31 of them... !!!!).

Well, can´t say I did much hiking in Putre because... Arnon had troubles with the altitude and I was lazy as usually. Anyway, Putre is a good place to be lazy and have a headache, and that is what we did! Didn´t see more of Lauca park than just what driving through it in rain and oncoming fogshowed me, but I believe it is very beautiful. Just a shame that the border posts are so ugly. Hmmm, at the Chilean immigration in Chungará (in Lauca) we had to take ALL the luggage out of the bus for inspeccion (the chileans are so worried about us wanting to smuggle fruits or cheese or even semen into Chile) and somehow my walking stick fell off my backpack. As I was putting the pack on the x-ray device a guard came in with the stick in his hand, asking whose it was. "Oh, hey, that´s mine, thanks!" I said, and got a funny look from the guards: "What is this???" They had obviously never seen a Leki walking stick before so I told them the truth: "Ah, it´s for beating up my husband". This made their day completely, and as I went into the bus again the first guard blinked to me and said: "Just make sure you beat him REALLY hard". It takes so little to please small hearts :)

Now we are in Arica (Arnon needed low altitudes again, and I needed someone to see me off at the bus terminal tonight) where it is hot and humid and the cormorants nest in the palms. Note this: the cormorants nest in the palms. Hey, so far I´ve only seen cormorants nesting in cliffs in cold Iceland or next to the penguins down in the Antarctic. What on earth are they doing in palm trees in North Chile??? We got here yesterday and I am leaving for Antofagasta on a bus tonight, then I´ll jump on a plane to Santiago tomorrow morning and... uff, it´s over. The plane to Paris/London leaves Santiago in the early afternoon of the 10th. Less than 48 hours remain. Hard to believe. Where should I go next???

still on the surface of the planet. Am leaving La Paz in a couple of hours, first I´ll run to lunch in my family´s house. La Paz is SOOOOOO great, I love this city. The idiots at Air France changed the time of my flight to Paris, made it go 11 hours earlier, so I have a nice long wait at Paris airport, and have to fly to Santiago on the day before, and not on the same day as my overseas flight. Bo, I don´t like Santiago and was looking forward to not having to spend too much time there... But, hey, there are nice people in Santiago, such as my friend Ruddy and his wife Claudia. And Hugh and his girlfriend (that I´ve never met), Hugh, where are you??? Write me an e-mail, so we can meet somewhere!

So, next stop is Putre in Chile, next door west of Parque Nacional Lauca. Will meet my friend Arnon there again, for a couple of days of hiking before going south... to go north... to the brrrrrr temperatures of Svalbard.

Many Bolivian presidents have been idiots. Let´s see what Lonely Planet´s Bolivia has to say about one of them, the "bizarre, cruel General Mariano Melgarejo, who ruled from 1865 to 1871...":

"Melgarejo is ... credited with a host of .... gaffes, including murdering a penitent conspirator, appropriating Indian lands..., ceding territory to Brazil in exchange for a horse, and tying the British ambassador naked to the back of a mule and banishing him for failing to drink enough beer. This last infringement, which was the last straw for Queen Victoria, led her to declare that Bolivia did not exist and that it would thenceforth not appear on British maps."

I´m in La Paz now, arrived here yesterday morning after a wonderful bus ride from Uyuni via Potosì (the bus broke down x times...). Checked into a nice cheap hotel right in the center, and went to see my guest family in the afternoon. It was good to se them, I even recognized (almost) all of them again :)

The bad news is that somehow I got sick on all these travels (again!!!!!) and am now rather miserable. Can hardly breathe and probably have a fever. Shit. Excuse my language. My guest mom built herself a house in the Yungas, near Coroico, and we wanted to go there together, but I don´t know if I can if I don´t get better VERY soon. Am simply lying in bed, except for when I have to go out to get some food and drink.

The Salar trip was great, as you guys can imagine. Our drivers were a bit weird, we had the feelig all the time that they were lying to us about everything they could make up a lie about, but the trip was wonderful and the landscapes surreal. It was so good to see all the water on the Salar, but it also meant that I did now get a permission to sit on the roof!!

I´ll be back later with more detailed news, ok?