keskiviikko 11. huhtikuuta 2012

2012 Lapland, Norway: The Coolest Group Conquers Lapland

Some photos at this point. This is just after crossing the Norwegian border.

Tromso seen from mountain Floya.

Floya - a cold paradise.

"People will think we are crazy. No, people will notice we are crazy.". Swimming in the Arctic Ocean without sauna in Tromsoya island.
As I love being international, I have gathered a group of cool international students around me as being a tutor, but moreover also a friend. Our friendship has grown into one great levels and we decided to explore the north parts of my country, as it's unfamiliar to me as well. Our group consists of French girl Marine, Mexican girl Daniela, Austrial guy Martin and Italian guy Vittorio.

5.4

After spending the previous night in Vimpeli with Marine, we finally started our trip to the north, picking up the rest in train station in Kokkola. Our first destination was going to be Kemi, about 300km away. On our way I showed one of the only real beaches in Finland in Kalajoki. Sun was treating us well and it was truly beautiful, almost no snow on the ground. In Kemi we went first to see the melting Snow Castle, but, as it was "quite lame this year" (also according to the ticket seller), we didn't get in. The frozen sea seemed highly interesting to my foreign friends. After using 2 hours and 250 euros in Lidl and Alko, we had enough food and drinks for the following 6 days. Our car started to look like a chipsy caravan with all that food. So our trip continues to the north! The next stop was close to Pello, 140km away, when we crossed the Arctic Circle. Arctic Circle needs a jumping picture. Vittorio lost his camera cover and we returned to get it, but didn't find it. So we crossed the Arctic Circle 3 times during one day. Finally we could feel we are in Lapland - the landscapes were more and more hilly and snow cover reached one meter (in Kokkola there was almost nothing). The view was magical - full moon on right side, sunset on left side. When the sun was nearly down we reached our first overnight place in Muonio. Sky was clear and full of stars, night was getting bitter. After Italian pasta, few beers, sauna and late night conversation we fell asleep on our first night in Lapland. The first rule of the trip was made: "always put the food on the floor before eating it!". This was made because we managed to drop all the cooked pasta on the floor but decided to pick it up and eat it. Magical start.

6.4

First notes in the morning - the windows are full of steam. I open the door and a cloud of steam comes to me - it's fucking cold, I put a note. -21 degrees says the thermometer, great for a morning hike. After typical Finnish porridge breakfast, we're ready to go. Car is fighting against me when I'm trying to start it, but finally it gives up and engine starts. Perfect, we're not stuck already the first day. Temperature rises slowly to -10 and sun is shining beautifully. Perfect. We take a drive to Särkitunturi, a fell only 15km away. On our way we see a skiing center. "Tourists, yak", way say, and continue to Särkitunturi where it's silent as if there was no sound in world at all. It's about 3,5km climbing to Särkitunturi and there's snow until my hips. Luckily the cold night made the snow possible to walk on, except if you make a miss-step from snow mobile path... When we climbed higher we could see the biggest fells of the area - Pallas and Olos. Few sighs for the beauty of the place. Finally we reached the top where we started to prepare lunch in Lavvu. Standing in the middle of a fell lake, surrounded by woods and complete silence you can feel like no one else lives in this world. Sausages and bread and we get back to car and continue to the north! About 100km away there's a Sámi culture center (which has developed quite touristic), the center of Enontekiö municipality, Hetta. Instead of taking ski lift we climbed on fell "Jyppyrävaara" to see how it looks up here. Wilderness, as far as you can see. And a couple of fells, of course. How big is the world, we think! Lapland is treating us well with the most clear sky and only few minus degrees. We sledge down and decide to search for reindeer meet. On our way we see a very small sign, follow road to very small village with very few houses, where a very shy guy opens the door to say that his mum is skiing. About 10 minutes later the mum returns and being as hospitable as a Lapland woman can ever be, she sells us reindeer meat for good student price of 4€/kilo! Even providing as good recipes and tips how to cook it. Great! So we continue to Kilpisjärvi, about 200km north of Hetta.

The scenery is getting more and more epic. Trees are getting smaller and hills are getting bigger. In the end there's almost no trees at all. Finally we reach Peera, our second overnight place. We faced few major problems - I told we are only 4, while we are actually 5, to reduce price. So we leave Martin to the wilderness of Peera and go to see Risto, the owner of the accommodation place. Our expectations are not much - he doesn't seem very co-operative and sounds always just woken-up or drunk when I call him. There was no one else than us and there lives only few persons inside area of 20km. Our cottage is cold and there is no water. He offers his own kitchen and toilet. Secrectly we pick up Martin (he was still alive) and smuggle him into the cottage. As we go to get water from Risto's house, he offers us his Kota (kind of BBQ teepee) where we could cook the reindeer. Then he figures out that we cannot actually cook it and decided to make it himself. At that point we realise how friendly and nice person he actually is, and decide to tell him that we lied about the fifth person. He takes it calmly and is understadable and tells, that Martin can sleep with him if he's not hairy. He also offers us a free snow mobile ride to top of Peera fell! Why not? Reindeer is getting ready, let's go for a snow mobile ride! Most awesome feeling - being in the true wilderness of Finland, where even trees don't want to grow. The view is superior, you cant see any living thing and snow is untouchable as far as you can see. Conditions are getting dangerous and we get down to meet a reindeer herd. He's not at home but we see a pack of reindeers in his yard. So we return "home" to eat the reindeer and grab few beers. Risto tells us stories how he has been nearly in every country, but we're not sure if this is just the fact how Lapland people have tendency for lieing or has this person,  living in the middle of nowhere, really visited even Mexico 5 times and telling that it was "not so bad!".  The night continues until 5 in the morning and we didn't get eaten by wild animals while using nature as a toilet. Night is weirdly clear and the mountains look threatening. Now I start to believe in Lapland magic. Northern lights appeared but we missed them. Darkest secrets are shared. This night will be stored in my memory with special accuracy!

7.4

Another clear morning, Risto invites us for a breakfast in his house. He takes a photo of us as his "new family". Warm farewell and a promise that I will teach the guys to sing "Niin minä neitonen sinulle laulan" before we come back to Peera. We decide to go for a morning hike to Tsaikhaljávri close to Kilpisjärvi. The sunny and warm weather changes rapidly into cloudy and extremely windy conditions. We have a picnic digged down in snow like the Lapland bird "kiiruna". Landscape in Tsakikhaljávri is like in moon, only whiteness. If you wouldn't see the great magical fell Saana, you would think as if there was nothing else than white and flat in the world.  I'm getting snow blind and cant recognice any shapes on ground. Before we freeze to death we decide to go down, where the clouds are disappearing. The trip continues to Tromso, the biggest city above Arctic Circle outside Russia. After driving one hour trough uninhabitated tundra, suddenly we see the ocean and high mountains of Norway, an unreal moment. There's nearly no snow on ground and temperature is +3. We need to stop the car and go to the beach to test if the ocean is real or not - and after Marine tasted it we realised that it truly is. The great Arctic Ocean, I can smell the fish! When we continue to Tromso the conditions change again - it starts to snow and Im having troubles controlling the car in slippery, narrow serpentine roads. Norwegian drivers are mad and pass me by because Im not driving like crazy. After every curve it's just getting more and more epic. I can't belive that I just drove with my own car here where the tundra meets the ocean. Finally we are in Tromso, where is 1 meter of snow next to the door of our extremely small cabin. Norway turned out so expensive that the only affordable option for 5 persons was booking a cabin for 4, which only consisted 2 bunk beds and a hot plate to cook some food. Camping time!

 Being extremely hungry, we started to cook some Pyttipannu and soon the whole room smelt like sausage, oil and onions. The fatty meal was followed by several beers and drinking games, that served as a pre-party before heading for the infamous night life of Tromso! Indeed, some level of drunkness was acquired. It was about 4km to the night life but of course we'll not take a taxi and non of us is in the condition for driving. The trip doesn't feel very long though, even though it takes more than one hour because stopping to speak every random person. Finally we find few slightly drunk Norwegians who are willing to go show us some traditional Tromso party, and so we enter a slightly too expensive bar. Our budget was enough for only one drink, which costed nearly 15€. We had created a really nice fake story of what took this group of 5 students coming from different countries to this Northern city: I was going to Levi for skiing, so I took Marine who was couchsurfing in Tampere with me, on our way in a party we met Martin who was in Erasmus in Oulu and he decided to join us, and then on our way we met Vittorio hitchiking to Russia and Daniela hitchiking to Sweden and decided to take them all with us. Well, then we met Risto who's son is studying in Tromso and he asked us to go to Tromso instead where his son was going to host us. So, that's why we came to Tromso and now we are looking for this guy in the club, asking everyone "are you the son of Risto?".

 This fake story caused a lot of laugh, most of people not believing us while some did and even invited us to after party. Because of this amazing story we met a Norwegian guy studying PhD in fishing and, drunk as I was, I started to describe the fishes Risto gave us. In the end we came to conclusion that Norwegians hate us and started to go back home when the sun was already getting up. How fun! It took so long time to walk home, the 2km bridge felt like 20km and it was windy as hell.

8.4

Sunshine, few plus degrees, snow melting... A perfect day for a hike to Floya mountain. We are slow, hangoverish, breakfast takes forever, people wash their teeth for one hour.. Finally, we're ready to go. To avoid paying around 10€ for the gondole lift to the mountain, we decide to try to climb on the mountain, even though the locals dont think its a very good idea. After 10min walking we see that he was right - there is more than 1m of snow, it's rather steep and takes a couple of hours. So we return and they are laughing at us because they knew we would return. The view up on the mountain is amazing - it feels as if we're in the top of the world, and the snow is smooth and white as wipped cream. And there is more than 2 meters of it! It's windy and cold, but the view over the city is just undescribable, so we don't really care a shit. Snowy mountains all over that are reflected from the blue ocean. Time to lay down on wipped cream and see how beautiful the world is. And silent. I'm just so happy we came all the way here.

After a couple of hours we take the gondola down and walk around the city for a couple of hours. It's such a nice contrast between ugly buildings and old, wooden fishermen houses. Soon we get bored with the city and decide to take a drive around the whole Tromsøya island. We found a huge university and a long tunnel with for example a round about under ground! I don't know what is the point, there was no hills, it didnt go under water and not much traffic.

The evenining is relaxed, we cook the fishes Risto gave us and enjoy it with some white wine. This night we want to be sure not to miss the northern lights, so we take shifts the whole night so that someone goes out every 15min to check the situation. Tromso should be one of the best places in Europe to see the northern lights. I already fell asleep at 12, but after a couple of hours I hear loud screaming: "northern lights! wake up! northern lights!". And that was true - there was nice green aurora borealis! Not very big though, but definitely that was it. So finally our aim to see the northern lights was fulfilled and we could go to sleep!

9.4

Time to pack our stuff and leave this heavenly place.. Well, before that, we have to do something that can be done only up north, like in Tromso. Swimming in the arctic ocean! We couldnt find a sauna, so we decided to go just go to beach and make our car as hot as it can get (that is, 34c). There was some people who were looking at us like "are you completely out of your mind?". For sure we are! Air temperature -5, water temperature +2, freezing wind, why not going to swim? At least it was perfectly sunny and those amazingly beautiful mountains well telling us "go for it!". So we did! After returning to car we realised how big mistake it was: our feet were full of sea-urchin spikes! We just cou feel them because our feet were too numb for the ice-cold water. Well, decide to continue out trip to our next destination, a small fishing town Skibotn. It's pretty, tiny and totally dead, despite the camping area full of travellers. Finally time to go to Finland. It's just as beautiful as when we returned, and we realised that we actually already miss the hilly tundra landscapes after looking at these mountains and fjords for a couple of days. After some 100km we see a familiar road.. it's Risto's road! Why not go to say hello to Risto? There he was, cutting reindeer in his house. The guys had finally learnt to sing "Niin minä neitonen sinulle laulan" so they presented it to Risto, his teekkari son and a Swedish reindeer herd. We could almost see a tear in Risto's eye. He asks as to stay longer and offers us some fish, but unfortunately we have to continue our trip to the south. 400 more kilometers that day to drive. So we continue.

On our way to south we can't miss an advertisement in the middle of nowhere: "coffee and donut 50cent!". Why not? The place turned out a huge souvenier shop and we ended up buying a little bit this and that, but finally also coffee and donut! The owner is a friendly samí woman who gives us some leather for free to make bracelets. We continue and finally, late in the evening, reach our final accommodation in Pello. This is the most luxurous cottage of our whole trip, although also the cheapest (it's totally middle of nowhere). We listen to weird alien music from Swedish radio channels, have some BBQ in kota and laugh too much until 4 o clock. Time to have our last night in Lapland.. It's magical..

10.4




I was lazy adding photos, here's finally some. This is a group sleeping in Peera.

And this is table sleeping.

In the house of Risto, after sharing breakfast with him. His new little family.

Jumping in Kilpisjärvi

.. and falling down in Kilpisjärvi

Humanitarian help from Risto




I can feel the depression among my friends, it's the time to really get out of Lapland. 300 more kilometers and there's only very little snow and it's raining. Shit. So long my friends, I'm pretty sure this is just one of the amazing trips we're about to do together!