05.07.2011 – 05.07.2011  14 °C

Early start as we had the Europcar dude picking us up at 9am. Got our beast (equiv to $1k for 3 days—probably one of the most exy car rentals on earth!)—a VW Golf Station Wagon—and started driving to Karuesavanto.

The VW Golf is a manual diesel, so it was interesting driving out of the car park in a manual on the wrong side of the road! Actually it is probably easier for us to drive a manual on the wrong side than it would be for Europeans or Americans (mainly because as a right hander it isn’t too bad for us to change gears with our right hand as opposed to changing gears with your left..)

Anyway off we went for our first drive through the Norwegian wilderness. The terrain leaving Tromso is just beautiful- huge granite alpine looking mountains (that are still snowcapped!) with large tracks of spruce and pine trees and of course lakes! This part of Norway (and Sweden and Finland for that matter) is just covered in lakes and rivers. Every valley has some sort of stream.. And where you get streams and boggy marshes you get mozzies..

Let me tell you that they grow their insects up here, BIG. The size of the mozzies, bees and other flying things are just huge, and on top of their size there are so many bugs that you are constantly swishing your face, swatting your arms/ legs/ face etc.. It actually makes sitting outside in the sunshine unpleasant!

The terrain did subtly change throughout the day to by the time we arrived in Karasuvento the huge mountains had all disappeared and we now had fairly flat terrain. The soil is quite poor and arid looking (rocky, sandy soil) covered in huge birch forests (although the trees are probably only half of the size they would be anywhere else.. we think the cold stunts their growth) with plenty of lakes and marshy sections. We were stoked this arvy because we had a reindeer jump out in front of the car! Luckily it jumped out far enough down the road to give us breaking distance, but it was pretty awesome to see one of Santa’s helpers up so close!

Gee one other thing is that we can’t complain about the weather here. Here we are, well above the arctic circle, sunshine is streaming down and the temp is probably about 18 deg! Who can complain about that??? Apparently the mean temp for the year in the arctic is 0 deg!!! So much for polar! (If you are interested, the mean temp for the year in the Antarctic is -58 deg!!)

Stayed the night in this one horse town called Karasuvento on the Finnish/ Swedish border. Quite amusing but one of the street names in this town is “Dargys’s” which we decided was pretty funny as it looks pretty much like Daggy and man that sums up this town pretty well!

When we checked in we were the only visitors in the whole hotel! Completely dead! Eventually others did arrive but you couldn’t say that the hotel was packed! The town itself is right on the border so one street is in Finland and the street running perpendicular is Sweden! We spent a sum total of about 15min checking out the town and then returned to our hotel for a night spent playing cards… Gazz you’ll be interested to know that bookie can actually play Euchre!!! I know surprising what?

Anyway off tomorrow for our second car leg- Karasuvento to Karasjok (back in Norway)….. For all of those monetarily interested the comparison on fuel price between Finland and Norway is interesting.. Fuel in Norway is close to $3/ litre as compared with just over $2/ litre in Finland! Needless to say that we are going to fill up the car in Finland before we take off again tomorrow.. So all of you Aussies whinging about $1.50/ litre……