onsdag, augusti 31, 2005

Lappland and Karhunkierros

Part 2 of my recapitulation; as already mentioned, from Helsinki I went to Kuusamo, where I met Yki again. I arrived there on thursday evening and a bit later we were already fishing. We didn't catch anything useful, but fortunately Yki had some traps as well where he caught some fish, which we had smoked for dinner. On friday evening we left Kuusamo to go hiking on the famous Karhunkierros, the bear's trail. We did only a part of the whole trail and Yki told me first that the distance would be approximately 35 km, but in the end we realised that is was much longer. We walked 51 km in 2 1/2 days, or to be precisely within 48 hours.
The trail is built for trips of several days' duration and therefore are cottages on the way where you could stay overnight. But since it was quite crowded on the trail these days (i.a. a travel group from Slovakia with 45 people), we decided to sleep in our tent.
It was impressive to walk through the forests of Lappland and we were lucky with the weather, sun was shining allmost all the time. At the first evening there has been a lot of mosquitos and you have to know how to protect yourself although you cannot totally avoid them. But you get also used to them somehow.
On monday I left Yki and Kuusamo again and drove farther north, to Rovaniemi. Yki, I want to thank you and your family again for the warm hospitality, have a nice time in St. Petersburg and I hope to see you again.