Lapland Part II

It was great to wake up in the nice warm cottage, look out the window and see everything was covered in thick white snow. After breakfast we headed outside to make use of the few hours of daylight available to us.

The boys prepare to get the girls

The plan was to walk to the town centre and inquire about skiing and other activities, but on the way we inevitably became bogged down in a snowball fight between the ten of us.

In the midst of the snowball fight

It ended up being everyone v the British, which actually made the sides even and allowed me to concentrate on throwing snowballs at the French (that is to say, Florian, the only French person with us!).

The truce, which as you can see I broke shortly afterwards

Eventually we made it to the bus stop and took the free ski bus to the resort town of Levi. We hadn't actually seen the town yet and I was quite impressed by the big slope that dominated the view.

The Belgian couple romantically vandalised this innocent car

We asked about the possibility of skiing, but with it already quite late we decided to hire the equipment the next day to make best use of the time. Me, Andrew and Rachel booked a ski lesson for the following morning.

Our finished igloo, complete with snowman guard

We spent the rest of the day doing the usual snow things of throwing it at each other, sledding, creating snowmen and working on our igloo. We finally finished our igloo in the evening and to be honest it really came out great - it was big enough for four people, atmospherically illuminated by candles we had sunk into the walls and even had a window. Inside it was really cosy and actually quite warm, so it worked well.

The four builders inside our igloo

It had been a very long day spent outdoors in the cold, so what better way was there to relax and warm up than with a sauna. We were quite thoroughly freezing after finishing our igloo so we spent much longer in the sauna than usual and then tried the ultimate Finnish tradition...running outside and rolling in the snow (naked) to cool down before running back to the sauna. It was a great and very refreshing feeling.

Me, Andrew and Rachel trying on our equipment. The helmets came in handy!

The next day we got up early and caught the bus to Levi. We all headed to the ski shop, where three of us rented the downhill skis and the rest went for the cross-country skis as they were more interested in trying it. They went off on a long distance track while the three of us took a lesson. It was at beginner's level and despite the rather cheap price we had our own instructor just for us.

The others were not getting on so well with the cross-country skiing

I had actually been skiing once before but never learnt the 'proper' way to do it, so it was good to learn things like the correct way to fall over, how to slow down and how to stop (which I had never actually got the hang of). Our instructor was a great teacher and even made us take off a ski and ski down an easy slope with just one leg to learn to balance.

Andrew outside our starting area

Me and Rachel got the hang of it very quickly indeed, while it took Andrew a little longer but considering we were all relative beginners we made a lot of progress. Rachel persuaded me to attempt the terrifying-looking red level slope, as we were getting a bit bored of the kid's slope and realised we were not going to improve much more without tackling something tougher.

We tried this just hours after putting on our skis for the first time!

By this time Florian had joined us, as he was something of a pro at skiing and didn't need lessons. In fact he even took the absolutely suicidal-looking 'black' level course, which is used for the skiing world cup that took place a couple of days before we arrived. Anyway, Rachel went first down the red slope and despite a couple of falls she made it in one piece. It was then my turn, and while it was frankly the scariest thing I've ever done (at times clouds obscured the top so you couldn't even see the bottom!), it was a great feeling to make it down. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking it in turns on the slope (as we had cheekily only bought one ski pass so needed to share it) and by the end I had improved enormously and after a day I was at a level Florian said had taken him weeks to learn!

Outside the cottage on our last day

Eventually we had had enough of downhill skiing and swapped our skis for cross-country, which was if anything much harder as there was no gravity to assist you. We skied back to the cottage instead of taking the bus, and returned them in the morning (as the rental was for a 24 hour period). We then packed our things, caught the bus back to Rovaniemi, where we briefly met our friend Robin who now studies there and got the overnight train home to Helsinki. I was exhausted after the weekend so I found it much easier to sleep. It was just a shame we had such a short time in Lapland. It was an amazing experience and I really want to go back sometime!