hiidenkonttibeta

After buying 2.5kg of mutton (for three people) we took off. The next interesting event was a little sightseeing tour on the mouth of Kemijoki, after missing the access ramp. We crossed the river by the bypass road bridge and re-crossed it by Isohaara hydropower station bridge.

In Tervola we switched cars – unloading the first and loading the second and finding out that there was less space for our stuff in the new one. Later, when we went shopping in Rovaniemi, all of the food bags had to go to the back seat.

I drove from Tervola to Sodankylä, where we tuned our blood caffeine levels and switched drivers again. In the cafe where we stopped someone had created personal signs for the restroom doors:

North from Sodankylä we started seeing a lot more reindeer on the road:

The next interesting spot was the fjeld called Kaunispää in Saariselkä. Ice-cream time! Except there was a power failure and one of us didn’t get her ice-cream. Apparently Inari was also without electricity.

There’s a lot of small, creative cairns on the top of Kaunispää:

Here’s some scenery (wide-angle lens of the camera phone includes a lot of sky and ground in the pictures; if there’s too much sky, the ground part turns very dark – there’s no way to control the exposure, so I’ve compensated by tilting the camera so that there’s as little sky as possible) and a window of some building and some simple chairs from Kaunispää:

After some more driving towards the setting sun and watching out for any somewhat reindeer-like figures on the roadside we arrived at the lake. The sun is shining, the air is still, and there’s no black clouds of mosquitos around. After the final 5km boat trip (occasionally by rowing, over the rocky areas – the water level is still low) we have arrived at the destination:

After a little wondering around we had a fire going and sausages broiling (but not in these photos):

And so ends the first day.