Day with Reindeer Herder @ Nellim

In my trip to Finland, we participated the day with reindeer herder arranged by the Wilderness Hotel Nellim which lasted slightly more than 5 hours, starting at 10.30am. Well, first of all, I guess I was mislead by reindeer. I thought we'll be going to a reindeer farm and spend the day playing with the reindeers. Well, I was right, sort of.

First, I never realised that we are going to ride the snowmobile again. This is my 3rd snowmobile ride for this trip, not that I'm complaining. The snowmobile will allow us to get to the farm, and yes, ice fishing. Apparently, reindeer herders also do fishing to supplement their income I guess.

Below is the picture of the snowmobiles that went out that morning. We had a big group - 11 snowmobiles. :)

We initially stopped at a reindeer hold-up area where the guide told us a brief history of reindeer herding. After that, we proceed to one of the guide's reindeer farm. We could take some the feed and let the reindeers eat from our hands. Below is a picture of the guide leading the way with the bucket of reindeer feed.

Look, reindeer eating out of the hand. :)

I could resist taking pictures of the different reindeers roaming around the farm.

We stayed there for quite some time. After that we proceed to another place for a campfire lunch. :) Below is a picture of the place where we stopped for our lunch, and later for ice fishing. :)

Look at our campfire, and our lunch. Yummy? :)

After lunch, we proceed to a spot in the middle where we saw a branch sticking out of the snow. Apparently, that branch is used by them to indicate that the fish net is under the ice.

Let me see if I remember the steps correctly. :) The hole was first drilled through using the blue contraption you see below and one of the people started using a pole to break a hole near the branch. A square hole.

After which, they tied a long string onto a weird wooden contraption which I will show later in my post below. The wooden contraption is lowered down into the hole as shown below.

After which, the other end of the string was pulled to a new location and another hole was drilled in by the blue tool you see below. The wooden contraption was pulled up from under the ice and the string was tied to the other end and lowered down again to be pulled up back at the other end.

The net was then tied to one end, and it was pulled to the other side. A weight was tied to the net so that the net can be stretched under the ice.

Later we went to take out another net that was put there a few days ago using the same method.

Look!! We have 2 fishes!

A whitefish, and a trout. Not a very good catch, but considered okay as spring has not yet arrived.

After that, we packed up and went back to the hotel. If I recall correctly, we reached back at almost 4, most probably because we are such a big group. It is fun though!

Stay tuned for most posts on my activities in Finland!