Finland to hell and back
One of the highlights without a doubt for us was the trip we made with our guide Matti to “hell and back”… and yeah it sounds pretty bad but in reality it wasn’t that bad, although I will not say it was an easy stroll in the park, but the place we visited actually was called this way.
Normally we don’t really care about a 2KM walk, in fact on average we like to walk for anywhere between 10-15km during travels, so 4KM was not that far we thought (2×2), well we didn’t take into the account the terrain to say the least. Imagine walking over a balance bar (but slightly wider) and when you place your feet beside the bar you sink down 40cm into the snow, now add some steep hills and some very long stairs where you can see the steps because they are all covered in snow or are frozen and you can imagine the fun we had….. yeah indeed we love this kind of stuff, I’m not the kind of guy that likes amusement parks or tourist routes. But wait there is more….
Before we started out walk we did ask Matti if there were any wolfs or bears (just to make sure), his answer was very simple… “might be, if they are just make noise and otherwise I have this” and he showed us a pretty long knife…. we did not ask how many wolfs he already killed (ok we did and he never had to use it, got you there for minute right?)
Walking through this kind of nature always inspires me to take shots, but how do you make trees interesting?
Well one of the things I love to do is use a wide angle and stand really close the tree and just aim up.
Looking at the signs we could see the cabin coming closer and closer and to be honest walking through the snow was pretty heavy, not undoable but it did made us tired, so when we saw that we only had a few 100 meters left we felt actually quite happy…… until we saw this.
In the summer probably a piece of cake but in winter with frozen steps and covered with snow………well let me put it this way I was incredibly happy our snow boots had spikes because we REALLY needed them, without spikes I’m almost certain I (or Annewiek) would have slide down (thinking about that it might had been much faster hummmm).
After enjoying the slippery steps we arrived in a small cabin where we were treated to a real Finnish lunch, and now we know why bringing a knife is so important 😀
After lunch it was time to get back to the car, but first we had to climb a little bit more for this amazing view over the lake.
And of course take some images on the lake.
And after that it was back to the car.
And yeah I look pretty warm, and to be honest… it was a bit too warm indeed. We were actually dressed for app -35 or so and it was only slightly below zero, that’s why I don’t look that happy in this shot after the hike 😀 But trust me we had a blast.
On the way back I tried to catch some amazing sunsets through the window of the car. To shoot images like this make sure you set your shutter speed rather high to counter the bumping of the car. Now why not get out?…. well if you let me I would get out of the car every 10 minutes (probably less) because I see something worth shooting, so I just settle for images shot through the car window, and let’s be honest… they are not that bad.
Although we loved all the other trips this must have been the most exciting and beautiful and we would love to thank Matti immensely for taking the time to do this with us.
