Toward the North Cape - Finland 2/6 — travel diary by stellina_latina

The story

TRAVEL DIARY FINLAND

This diary follows on from the Sweden chapter The trip is made by camper and made up of four people

Wednesday 31.07.91

Departure from the campsite at 7.30 in search of the port. Excellent road signs: boarding at 9 in Stockholm for Naantali. A wonderful day, a calm and beautiful crossing among a myriad of Swedish and Finnish islands. We sunbathe on deck. On the VIKING LINE ship, the motor vessel ISABELLA, there is a nautical chart that lights up the route covered. We reach Naantali at 19, where there was a campsite, but we went on to Turku, where by then everything was closed. We visit the Cathedral from the outside. We drive along the main canal that leads to the sea, then head for Helsinki. At 23, tired, we stopped to sleep in a service area.

Thursday 01.08.91

Departure in the morning and at 8 we arrive in Helsinki. Paid parking near the station. We visit the city: the Cathedral above a fine flight of steps, the TEMPPELIAUKIO CHURCH beneath the public gardens, with its beautiful glass and copper dome. Gardens with stone spheres, the national museum building and the Congress building, a theatre with an endless square of flags. We do various shopping in an underground shopping centre and near the station. Departure for the north. A family campsite in a birch wood near lake Corpilahti. Near Jyvaskyla at 16. Near us a camper of French people with whom we exchange a few impressions. In the whole campsite we were 6 or 7 families in all.

Friday 02.08.91

Departure at 9.30. At Aanekoski we do our shopping and post the Helsinki postcards. We have lunch in a parking area where we find a coach of Germans heading for the North Cape: they convinced us to change route eastwards and to reach the North Cape. At 16.30 we arrive in Kajaani, a very large campsite among woods and near the lake. My sister and I have a Finnish sauna with a dip in the icy lake - what courage to plunge in! After dinner we take a walk along the lakeside, as far as the village; the church at sunset is striking, along with the harbour and the fountain. We also eat the first strawberries sold along the roads. Finland is famous for its fantastic strawberries.

Saturday 03.08.91

Departure from the campsite at 8.30. A few kilometres later, after a gentle hill and an isthmus across a lake, we are in LAPLAND. And at once we spot the first reindeer. In Kuusamo we ask which pump to use because the signs are only in Russian (?!). The attendant is busy with other customers and points us to the pump. That pump island holds a green pump and a black one: of course, needing diesel, we fill the camper with the black one. We pay, we set off but... the engine died a few hundred metres from the petrol station. It was green petrol! While the diesel pump was the green one! The attendant feels terribly guilty and, together with my father, they empty the entire tank with a hose (sucking by mouth and then letting the petrol flow), even calling the family to possibly tow the camper with a tractor etc. They filled us up with diesel for free with a thousand apologies.

Very kind, but that way we lost about 2 hours and the camper still runs a bit jerkily, and will do so for a few days. We were supposed to go up a mountain from which you could see the Russian plain, but since the engine isn't completely right now, my father doesn't trust it to tackle such a long climb. When starting the engine you have to bleed the petrol vapours from the filter and shake the camper. In fact I think it was funny to watch: we had to get out and shake the camper to mix the petrol residue with the diesel. Crossing the Arctic Circle NAPAPIIRI: a stop and the classic photos at the sign. At 18 we arrive in Kemijarvi. After dinner we took a walk around the campsite; under the birches we found mushrooms. A coach of youngsters from Jyvaskila with a great coming and going to the sauna. Here it no longer gets dark. Sunset and sunrise merge. The temperature continues to be good.

Sunday 04.08.91

Departure from the Kemijarvi campsite at 9. The first Lapp tents and shops at Tankawaara, entrance to a region for gold prospecting. At the highest pass encountered so far, Saariselka 438 m, we stopped for lunch. We find herds of free-roaming reindeer and, trying to get a closer photo, the lead reindeer charges me. I jumped onto the camper in a flash with my family laughing! From this point the landscape changes: all through Finland it was one succession of lakes, conifer woods and birches, now the first Norwegian mountains appear on the horizon. We encounter the first fields of aerofori (those pretty plush flowers that look like cotton); the mosquitoes and reindeer continue. We photograph a white reindeer and an albino one.

Right afterwards we took the wrong road, convinced it was a junction inside the little village rather than the junction for Russia; we take the road to the Russian plateau. We lengthened the route by about 150 km but, in exchange, we saw the border complete with barbed wire and Russian military turrets. We asked for information from a German couple coming from the opposite side. We hoped, then, since we were already there, to be able to pop into Russia... perhaps to St Petersburg, but without visas approved months in advance we couldn't have crossed (according to the Germans). This area was the only one that could recall the tundra. To go to Norway we had to travel down the valley of the Tana river, the border between Finland and Norway, precisely so as not to cross the border at the Russian frontier. The crossing into Norway is marked only by a sign.

We camp right after the border at Karasjiok. The Norwegian campsites appear less equipped and organised than the Finnish ones, and also more expensive. The travel diary continues with the Norway chapter

ITINERARY

1100 Km MILAN, Basel, Frankfurt, Kassel, HANNOVER

700 Km HANNOVER, Hamburg, Puttgarden, GRAANNA 500 Km GRAANNA, STOCKHOLM 300 Km STOCKHOLM, HELSINKI 300 Km HELSINKI, CORPILHATI 370 Km CORPILHATI, KAJAANI 400 Km KAJAANI, KEMIJARVI 560 Km KEMIJARVI, KARASJOK 250 Km KARASJOK, NORDKAPP 230 Km NORDKAPP, ALTA 390 Km ALTA, NORDKJOSNORN 370 Km NORDKJOSNORN, NORSVIKBOTN 380 Km NORSVIKBOTN, MORSJOEN 350 Km MORSJOEN, STEINKJER 300 Km STEINKJER, SJOA 250 Km SJOA, OSLO 250 Km OSLO, LJUNGSKILE 250 Km LJUNGSKILE, VIBORG 430 Km VIBORG, HAMBURG 740 Km HAMBURG, FREIBURG 480 Km FREIBURG, MILAN