Day 11: Rovaniemi (Finland)

I need to start off tonight with a few points of clarification.

Firstly, I’m not really sure where yesterday finished, and today started. We went out on our Northern Lights tour last night. We were picked up at 7.55pm last night, and dropped back home (after driving all over Finland) at about 3.30am this morning.

Secondly, and because of the above, I’m feeling a little gritty today. Or grotty. Or grumpy. Not enough sleeps makes Geoff grumpy.

And thirdly, I’m concerned that there might be something seriously wrong with me. I’m pretty sure that I said to MBW this morning before we left the apartment that “it’s not too cold today – it’s only -3 degrees.) I think I may be Finnish-ed.

I felt like a cross between a Sara Lee pastry (with multiple layers), and the Michelin Man today. I had so many layers on it was almost impossible to bend over.

We went out on our driving tour last night in search of the Northern Lights. We didn’t actually “see” the Northern Lights, but we photographed them. Yes, I know that sounds a little crazy too.

Our tour guide was a young (25yo?) guy named Alexis, from Uruguay and who has been here 7 months since leaving Poland and Ukraine, and doesn’t speak the local language. He was a lovely young man and he did his very best to give us the best possible chance of seeing the lights, including driving many kilometres all over Finland (and almost into Sweden) and stopping at these remote locations where he has had success before.

One of the things that his company touts as separating them from the others is their “guarantee” of seeing the lights, because they share information across all of their teams and utilise some high-tech satellite system to provide a level of confidence that we will have a successful hunt.

Last night was quoted as 60-70% chance of success.

Unfortunately – and only after we got about 90 minutes drive out of Rovaniemi – he announced that the satellites were overloaded and that the data on his app was incorrect. So he didn’t really know where to find the lights.

Then he announced that the full moon was making it all very difficult, and then later again he was doing a 3-point turn on some frozen road in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and he reversed too far off the road and got us bogged in snow up to our axles … and the front driving wheels could get no traction on the icy road, so we just sat there spinning our wheels.

At one point it looked like we were never going to get it out of the snow, and I really just wanted to start singing “Let it go …”

But we pushed it out. Everyone was standing around contemplating their navels, so I told them to all get behind and start pushing.

Honestly, these people couldn’t organise a bun fight in a bakery.

But the biggest disappointment about the tour was our other guests travelling with us. There were 8 guests and Alexis in our 9 seater Transit van – an Indian couple who live in the UK, a couple of Asian girls, and another couple from Serbia. Honestly, when everyone was chattering away to their respective partners during the drive, it was like being stuck at the Tower of Babel during a smoko break.

The biggest disappointment was that MBW and I were stuck in the back row of the van, in the spot where it is most difficult to get out and look for the lights, and none of the other guests appeared to have any real ongoing interest in getting out and looking for the lights because a) they were too tired or b) they were too cold … which made it extremely difficult for MBW and I to get out.

Our 2 Asian friends spent most of the trip on TikTok, which really just blew my mind. And not in a good way, either.

But there were some funny things that happened too. At our first stop, I set out across a snow-covered field, only to discover that the snow was about knee deep, and it was very difficult to get out.

And it was cold. To paraphrase Sly Stallone from Rhinestone … “this is cold. This is serious cold.” At one point the “feel like” temperature got down to -17 degrees, and you very quickly lost feeling in your fingers and toes. In fact at one point I was the only one out of the van taking long-exposure shots of the lights on my phone, and I was out for so long that I could barely speak – it was like I’d lost all feeling in my mouth and tongue.

Our final stop – the one where we got bogged – turned out to be the most successful. You don’t actually “see” the lights (… well, we didn’t …), but you see a strange lightening of the sky that looks unusual, and when you photograph it on time delay you get a photo of the lights in colour.

Don’t ask me to explain that, though. Have a look at some of the photos that I managed to capture below.

MBW & I both had a couple of nods in the van while we were travelling, but we didn’t get home to bed until about 3.30 this morning and woke around 9.00am, so we are both feeling a little weary today.

Today we had a snowmobile tour planned with the same tour company, and they were scheduled to pick us up at around 12.00 noon, so we had a couple of hours to kill. Rovaniemi is not a large township, with a population of around 65,000 and we went for a walk around the city.

It’s very strange how everything is covered with snow and ice, and quite treacherous to navigate.

In the middle of town we found Santa’s official office (well, one of many in the Arctic Circle, anyway) and we went in and had a chat with Santa. I determined pretty quickly that he is obviously not the “real” Santa, because he told us quite confidently that we are both on his nice list … and I find that very hard to believe.

Back at the apartment we got ready for snowmobiling, and we were picked up on time and taken into their office to get fitted out with warm winter overalls, before heading about 45 minutes drive from Rovaniemi to a frozen lake.

Here is a fun fact – the lake is frozen with about 50cm of ice which is suitable for snowmobiles, but it must be at least frozen 20cm thick to be allowed to walk on it.

Snowmobiling is fun, although very different from being on a jetski. Very bumpy with no real sense that you have any control over the vehicle as it slides around the ice. And cold.

The snowmobile that MBW and I rode had heated handlebars, and they were set to stun. They were so hot that I honestly couldn’t hold them without burning my hands – despite wearing 2 pairs of gloves.

After snowmobiling around a frozen lake for an hour, we went back to the starting point and had a hotdog and a hot beverage.

Many of the houses around the lake are painted in a deep red/brown colour with white trims, which gives you this surreal feeling that you are stuck in a gingerbread house village and you could bump into Hansel and Gretel at any time.

We were back at our apartment by 3.00pm, so we had coffee and wandered up the road to our local supermarket to buy some stuff that we cannot live without – like reindeer jerky.

We also did some planning for tomorrow – our last full day in Rovaniemi, but with a few things planned anyway.

We plan to head down to the local riverbank (on Santa’s recommendation) to have another crack at seeing the lights again tomorrow night, but today we are just too wrecked.

Our apartment was listed with a sauna in the list of facilities, and it is obviously part of a shared set of facilities for the building.

Wrong!

We have our very own sauna in our bathroom wedged in between the shower, and the washer/drier combo. So this afternoon, I indulged. It took me a while to figure out how to make it work (made just a little more challenging because the instructions were in Finnish), but Google Translate came to the rescue and I got it solved.

I lost about a kilogram of sweat, but alternated sweating with jumping into a cold shower. I feel younger already!

And that’s about it. We have both hit a wall tonight, so it will be an early one.

I hope you are enjoying travelling along.

Ciao

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