Day 17 - Muonio to Alta, Norway

Today we visited our 10th, or if you count the 100 yards dash in and out of Sweden yesterday, our 11th country of the tour so far.

While Wendy was getting ready to leave, I went down to the Muonio River to take some photos. Just outside the hotel was this sign showing the huskies that are used for dog sledging in the winter. We learned later that there are 400 huskies housed here.

The river was running very fast and in the distance I could see it flowing over some rapids. I bent down and felt the ice cold water, very refreshing!

 

A photo of the Harriniva Holiday Centre.

The centre was virtually empty as the winter season had ended and the summer trekking season would not start until mid-June.

I heard from Ahmad that the parts had arrived for his car and they were now fitting them.. He would let me know later how things were going.

We all drove down to the local garage for breakfast where there seemed to be some sort of party going on outside. A group of people were sitting under an awning drinking and eating, while a woman was playing an accordion. We had no idea what it was all about.

We had a quick breakfast and then drove on minor roads through a local national park. As we were about to turn off to the park headquarters, we had a call from Ahmad saying he was on the road again! He said he would see us this evening in Alta. It was great news to help us on our way. We reached the park Visitor Centre, from where we had a fantastic view over the pine forests and the snow-covered mountains in the distance.

You might just be able to see the ski lifts on the mountain behind the building.

 

We returned to the road through the park and soon stopped at the beautiful ice-covered Lake Pallas. The water near the shore was the only ice-free part of the lake.

We left the park and came to Enontekio, one of the principle towns where the Sami people live. The Sami are reindeer herdsmen who move the herds all over Lapland between Finland, Norway and Sweden. The town has a very interesting church dedicated to the Sami. It was designed by the architect Veikko Larkas in 1952. There is the most impressive altar wall with a figure of Christ, two Sami and a group of reindeer, all in coloured mosaics. I hope these photos do justice to this wonderful piece of art.

 

 

 

We moved on from the church and almost immediately came across this small herd of reindeer walking along the road and eating the grass on the verges. It seemed to me that there was one buck and the rest were doe. Some of the reindeer had bells round their necks and they made a great sound as they walked by us as we took photos.

 

 

It was another great moment from our Baltic drive. On we went and within 40 kms we were at the border with Norway. Norway is a member of the Schengen Treaty and we did not have to stop for customs formalities, simply driving straight through into our 10th country of the drive.
 

The previous evening I had looked at a website that gives sunrise and sunset times for any place in the world. I had worked out that 5.5kms north of the border, we would come to the spot where 24 hours of sunshine occurs - the Land of the Midnight Sun. We stopped and I took this photo of the road and the Norwegian Arctic. I know I could have taken this photo more or less anywhere in this region, but readers will just have to believe me when I say it was at the very beginning of permanent daylight.

The drive then took us about 160 kms to our destination, Alta. The road was virtually empty and we drove past many iced-over lakes as well as mountains with snow. The vegetation had changed and now all that was growing in the region were silver birch trees and stunted bushes.

We reached Alta at about 3pm, having put our clocks back an hour for Norwegian time. We checked into our hotel, the Thon Vica, and about two hours later, who should show up but Ahmad and Reza! They had completed the drive from Oulu to Alta without a hitch and will now join us for the journey to the North Cape tomorrow. We celebrated their return to the tour with drinks and a meal in the hotel.

Tomorrow we reach a main goal of the tour, which is to drive our cars to the most northerly paved road in the world. It will be a great moment.