Hiking and Canoeing in Sweden!

Best weekend ever!  Woke up early saturday morning (6am...yuck) to get on a bus to Helsingor and took the ferry across Helsingborg over to Sweden.  All in all it was about a 2 hour trip to the Kullaberg Peninsula where the adventures began.  Anna and I paired up in a canoe and paddled for about 3 hours down Roone A, a beautiful river that passes through the countryside of Sweden.  It was amazing, reminded me of kayaking on the Kennebunk river.  After canoeing, we boarded a bus that took us to the hostel, Vandrarhem Jonstorp and unloaded our bags and enjoyed a quick lunch before hiking.

The hike to Nimis was next on the schedule.  We hiked through the woods for about 30 minutes to reach Nimis, a series of wooden sculptures situated along the coast of the Kullaberg Nature Reserve.  There were huge, wooden towers all constructed with driftwood.  The coolest part about this day was meeting the artist, Lars Vilks.  He began building this in 1980 and because no permission was given to him to build within the reserve, the Swedish authorities are against him but can't really do anything about it.  Julie, Anna, Clair and I climbed some of the towers!

That's us waving at the top!

And the creator of Nimis himself.

We returned to the hostel after the hike and had a big barbeque in the garden with all of the DIS students and tour leaders.  Later that night, they had a bonfire with smores and ice cream and we all hung out by the fire for a while.  Early the next morning, we departed for Kullaberg for a day of climbing, hiking, and rappelling down cliffs.  Rappelling was probably one of the scariest things I've ever done.  We only had one guide to teach 30 of us how to latch on and basically jump down the side of a cliff.  It was insane, but we were all so glad we did it!

This is the second cliff we rappelled down.

Overall, Sweden was absolutely amazing.  By going through DIS, it allowed us to do things we would have never done and see things we would have never seen if we were travelling alone.  Such a great trip!