Loitering around Inari

As mentioned in the earlier posts, it was free & easy during our stay at Inari during my Finland trip. We spent about 3-4 hours loitering around Inari, which is quite a small place. The only difference between here and Nellim is that there are shops around which you can buy things. Souvenir shops, supermarkets and some mini craft shops. :) Just take note that the 3 - 4 hours include the time that we took to browse through all the supermarkets at Inari (2), and souvenir shops (2). So yes, it's not that big.

Hotel Kultahovi is situated in quite a convenient location. It's about 5 minutes away from the nearest supermarket and maybe 10 minutes from Siida museum. Below is the picture of supermarket nearest to Hotel Kultahovi. The pricing is quite okay too. :) There is also a petrol station with a burger diner behind this supermarket.

There are 2 souvenir shops down the road beside this supermarket and you can't miss them so no photos for those 2 shops. ;) Along the way, you will also find this O'Yes Pizza & Kebab shop shown in the picture below which sells quite affordable food. However, I have to warn you that the portion that is given is a lot by my standard (Asian standard?) so you may want to share a plate. Most meals cost about 10 euros, with some costing a bit more. Tea is free, at least for the first cup as that is what the cashier indicated. :) I refilled the hot water though.

Walking further down, you will see Hotel Inari which I had one of our lunches there. The food there is good and not THAT expensive. :)

Walking further down, you will see the nice homely Saamelaiskirkko church by the road, as shown in the picture below. I believe it's a Sami church and they hold events during important festivals.

The scenery around Inari is also quite refreshing, and a little different from Nellim but it's a little more city-like. Below is a panorama picture I took opposite the Pizza & Kebab restaurant. :)

 

I also took a short walk down the river Juutua near the hotel. It's now spring so I'm able to see the ice breaking up due to the fast moving river current that will be flowing to Lake Inari. Below are the pictures of the fast moving water that is breaking up the ice covering the river. Please be extra careful during this period because you can hear the ice breaking up when you're walking by the river. If you hear the sound, stay away from that area.

Apologies for the wide-angle shots because my cheap zoom lens couldn't function in temperatures below 0 degrees. Yes, it's new to me too. Luckily my 17-55mm lens work fine. My 75-300mm lens worked only like twice in a span of 5 minutes (because I quickly ran out and snapped a shot) and it's now working fine here. Oh well. :(

Will write more about my free & easy activities at Inari soon. Stay tuned.

Hotel Kultahovi @ Inari

After staying at the Wilderness Hotel Nellim in Finland for some time, we finally bid goodbye to Nellim and proceed on to Inari. Airport transfers are included within the hotel package, but not transfers between hotels. We had to pay additional to the hotel to arrange for the transfer but my advice is to go for it. Nellim is not like other cities where you see taxis cruising around. There are usually no cars on the roads at Nellim so better let the hotel arrange for you. :)

The ride to Inari is pretty long because the distance between Ivalo to Nellim, and Ivalo to Inari are almost the same. If I recall correctly, we took slightly more than 2 hours to reach Inari. Needless to say I fell asleep in the taxi so that was why my memory is a little hazy on how long it took. :)

We paid for half boarding which means that breakfast and dinner are included. Food is not a problem because there are a few restaurants located around the area.

Below is a picture of Kultahovi hotel upon arrival. Looks very new. :)

Hotel Kultahovi is more like a regular hotel except that it has a river hotel section that looks like the Pasir Ris resort chalet. :) They have back doors that open out towards the river Juutua, and yes. That is important if you want to catch auroras because it's darker there. :)

The reception is just towards your right when you enter the hotel. Check-in time is about 2pm if I recall correctly so we sort of hang around the area as we were there at about 12pm.

Below is the picture of the restaurant's bar and interior.

Beyond the grey doors that you see in the picture above, which seems to be open only in the evenings, is the "fireplace area". :)

Yes, the fireplace area looks pretty neat at night. However, I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it at night because of our mini aurora watch activity every night. :)

Anyway, below is the picture of our hotel room. Like a typical hotel room, except that to the left of the window is a backdoor that allows you to go out directly to the river. Keep your lights dim at night because if you suddenly see a lot of people walking out at night, just go out and have a look because that may mean that someone spotted the auroras. Another way is to turn off all the lights and just stare at the night sky. :)

Below is the picture of the TV, kettle and the coffee/tea. You can watch TV comfortably from the bed but there is a catch though. The TV remote that we had could only function when the remote is nearer to the TV. :)

Below is the picture of the bathroom. Nice and neat. The sauna room is just next to it as you can see in the subsequent picture. This is slightly smaller than the one at Nellim but still, the functions seem to be similar.

The river is only about a 2 mins walk from the backdoor. There is a small bench by the river as shown in the picture below but it's winter so I've not seen anyone sitting there during my stay at the hotel. The subsequent panorama picture shows a quick glance of how the river looks like in winter. Pretty cool.

There is a very very small hill near the river (about 2 mins to walk up) and personally, I like it up there because I find that it's a good place to take aurora pictures. My wife was complaining though because there is a complex up there and it's lighted up throughout the night. Translated, it's not dark enough. However, the nicest photo that I like came from that location so I guess it's subjective.

Below is the picture of the tent that is located up the very small hill.

Below is the picture of what the hill is overlooking. I guess you will understand why I like the place, even though that area is much brighter, compared to if you were at the river side.

The stay at Inari was free and easy for us so stay tuned for my posts on what I did at Inari.

Food @ Nellim

In my trip to Finland, I stayed at the Wilderness Hotel Nellim and opted for full boarding, as mentioned in my earlier posts. That means all meals are catered for ... ... buffet style. Before I move off from Nellim, I thought I would mention some of the food that I've eaten in Nellim during my stay in the hotel. All the pictures below are food provided by the hotel because well, there are no other shops near the hotel in Nellim that sells food anyway. :)

Below are pictures of the some of the food I've eaten during breakfasts at Nellim.

Bread, cheese, meat are always available for breakfast. Jams too.

Porridge is always available for breakfast too, together with cereals and shortcake biscuits

Sometimes there are different kind of biscuits you can have together with your porridge :)

Below are pictures of the some of the food I've eaten during lunch and dinner at Nellim. The reason why I am grouping it together because I really cannot tell the difference between the food served during lunch and dinner. :)

There is always some form of soup and lots of different types of bread for lunch and dinner.

You can always mix and match your bread with salad, which is also always available.

As you can see, I'm not very particular in segregating my food. :)

Notice that the food is generally meaty? Well, you'll need all the energy you can get.

No, you don't have curry over there. Just a sauce that looks like curry. :)

Yes, you get spaghetti sometimes too. :)

Yes, you have desserts too. Sometimes it's mousse, yoghurt or in this case, blueberry cake. :)_

All the food above is included in the full boarding, including free-flow coffee and large selection of tea throughout. They do have a small shop within the hotel that sells snacks like chocolates costing 2.50 euros each but usually, the buffet feeds me quite well.

Stay tuned for more posts on my next stop in Finland!

Auroras @ Nellim

What is the purpose of traveling all the way to Finland? To see the auroras of course! The night time is all yours and you can either opt to walk around in the hope of catching the elusive auroras, or join one of the aurora camps organised by the Wilderness Hotel Nellim.

Why did I say elusive aurora? Despite us joining 2 aurora camps during our stay at Nellim, we did not see any auroras during the camp. However, that is only half the story. More of that later.

The aurora camp will start at 9.30pm at night and will most probably end close to 1am. However, do not under-estimate the temperature at night. The wind seems to be always pretty strong. 2 pair of socks is a must, even in their winter wear and I wore my snow pants within their winter wear. Even with all that clothing, I still felt a little cold.

My hands are by default very cold because I had to manipulate my camera, and there is no way I can use mittens to manipulate the controls. Oh well. Anything to see the auroras.

You will sit in a sleigh pulled by a snowmobile. You can take a look at the picture below for a sleigh pulled by a snowmobile. Yes, the picture is in the day because it's pretty difficult to take pictures of the sleigh at night so I took this picture the next day. :)

The sleigh below is more representative of the ride I was in. There were reindeer skins at every seat though to keep you warm. It does help, for your information.

The guide/guides will bring you to location within Lake Inari with almost no lights so that you'll have a higher chance of seeing the aurora. They will also setup a campfire which is very useful because it will become very cold at night, no matter how layers you're wearing. Doesn't the campfire look cozy? :)

However, as I mentioned above, I did not get to see any auroras at all in the 2 aurora camps that I went. The weather was quite bad on the first day so there is nothing that you can see. For the second day, the sky was clearer and we saw ... ...

nothing. :( Yes, only stars and a bit of clouds. That's it. No aurora activity that night even though the sky is clear. Now you may understand what I mean by elusive auroras. It's not a guarantee that you'll see something even when the sky is clear. The stars are beautiful though.

BUT ... Like I said, it's only half the story. The lakeside cabin that we stayed in however, is also a good place to catch auroras because it is overlooking Lake Inari and at night, there's absolutely no man-made lights in that direction, except for the moon light.

We were lucky. On the first night, we happened to catch quite a strong aurora. What do I mean by strong auroras? Well, I like the pictures do the talking. Refer to the 4 pictures below.

Strong auroras will appear, regardless if the moon is full because well, it is strong. :) Personally, I've seen 3 types of auroras during my Finland trip. The strong ones, the normal ones, and the weak ones. As you can see above, the strong auroras are defined by very strong colors. In my case, it's green.

On the second night, we encountered some normal and weak auroras. Refer to the pictures below for examples of a normal aurora.

As you can see above, the colors are not as strong as the first batch, with the exception of the last 2  pictures above. Well, those pictures were sort of sitting in-between a strong and a normal aurora but I recall the lights that I've seen were not as strong compared to the first night.

Subsequently on the second night, I've also caught some weak auroras as shown in the picture below.

I think by now you'll be able to differentiate between the different kinds of auroras. All the aurora photos above are processed slightly. Initially I did not want to post process the photos but I realised that certain pictures did not reflect what I truly saw on that night, which led me to do a bit of post processing.

I am only post processing the aurora pictures because I want to show you the contrast between the aurora and the environment. Contrary to some opinions, simple post processing of auroras will not allow you to add things into the picture that did not exist in the first place. Giving an example, I've certain photos where the aurora is very very very weak and despite best efforts, there is no way to show the aurora clearly and the aurora looks more like clouds.

Unfortunately, I wasn't really prepared to take photos on the first 2 nights and I forgot to set my camera to take the photos in RAW format. As a result, there are limits on how I can manipulate the images.

Anyway, we are lucky to see the auroras on the first 2 nights of our stay. If you recall I did mention that I caught 3 nights of auroras. More of that in another post. :)

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!