Merry Christmas everybody!
Right now we are probably as close as we will ever get to living the life of jolly old Saint Nick. We have spent the last few days in Lapland on the Norwegian/Finland boarder in a small cabin on the edge of a lake with 34 racing huskies. The reason we are here and not in Tromso is global warming.
After arriving back from our two months of travel we were greeted with a partially frozen ground and no snow which meant no dog sledding and therefore no work. It took another week before the snow came but once it did we got a reasonable amount. This allowed us to learn the basics of driving a 10 dog sled team before we were let loose with customers. As the snow continued to fall the big bumps and holes began to fill in and we had some cool trips with northern lights peeping through the intermittent snow storms. One thing we have learnt up here is not to really trust the forecast as it's never right, unfortunately for us the predicted very warm wet weather rolled on in and stuck about for days. Quite frankly this sucked as we endeavoured to sled in 8 degrees and pouring rain the snow simply just disappeared again. To give you some idea of these temperatures they were the equivalent to the daytime high in the end of August/September. So as quickly as it came we were back to square one with no work.
Desperate times call for desperate measures so we loaded up all the racing dogs a ton of dog food, sleds and plenty of warm clothing and headed 500km inland to Finnmark where the temperatures at this time of year should be between minus 15 and minus 25. Although the temperatures hovered around zero there was some snow to work with although the recent rain had created a crusty top which made for extremely hard work for the dogs to break trail as they kept punching through to the soft snow underneath.
Dog sledding is heaps of fun especially when you are on nice trails and the dogs are all running well but it seems when something goes wrong it goes wrong quickly and normally in a big way. Our first training day up here was one of those days, after a lazy start to the day we fed and harnessed all the dogs ready for what should have been a 4 or 5 hour training run. We set off on to the frozen lake towards the Finish boarder where we hoped to cross the main road before hitting some snowmobile trails to follow. We managed to cross the road before everything went pear shaped. Firstly just on the other side of the road was a vey high fence so we tried to turn the teams and run along side the road. Team one got tangled in a road marker and a dog broke free while the other three teams went screaming down the road, straight through the boarder control (who did ask for the dogs passports) before eventually coming to a stop in different places. To cut a long story short it took us nearly 3 hours to get all the dogs minus one untangled, unknotted and back to the cabin. It took another 4 hours to find the lost dog who had somehow managed to avoid all the traffic and run 50km down the road heading for Tromso before another kennel managed to catch her for us to retrieve.
Not all days were like this with the dogs running some good k’s under perfect clear skies. We went for some cross country skiing on the lake as well as visiting the Sami town of Kautokeino where there is a very eccentric silversmith with an eclectic mix of jewellery and handcraft in and amongst the herds of reindeer.
The daylight hours are only about 5 hours in total and we never see the sun though the colours are spectacular. We are now used to this, doing most things by headlight and still try get out to make the most of the daylight on our days off. One of the other main winter draw-cards in Tromso are the whales which enter the fiords chasing after the schools of hearing. Most numerous are the orca which heard the hearings into huge bait balls before the massive humpbacks come and gobble up the whole thing. We have been kayaking with these amazing creatures twice now and every time you come back buzzing with just how graceful and gentle they are. We have had a few nervous moments when the humpbacks are swimming directly at you before diving and swimming right underneath before popping back up on the other side. Likewise the orca are rather inquisitive and will swim within a few metres of you even with their tiny little babies who are the size of a small dolphin. The next thing on the list is to borrow a very thick wetsuit and get in the water and snorkel with these beasts but we will need a little more daylight for that.
When the snow finally arrives and stays we need to get our heads down and bums up and earn our keep so that next year we can spend the majority of our time travelling with the intention to be home for Christmas next year… We have cross country skis already so we can ski to work and get out into the wilderness and hope to get up a few mountains skiing/snowboarding too though this requires a bit more time, effort and expensive gear.
I'll sign off here for another year and leave you with a few photos from our traditional villmarkssenter Christmas Day which is put on every year for the kids. I hope everyone reading this has a great Christmas break and makes an effort to put down their phones, get out of their comfort zone and experience this weird and wonderful world.
Peace out!
