As-salâmu 'alaikum: 28 Juli 2008

Pokka - Kaamanen ~140 km

It was raining cats and dogs the whole night. I didn't really notice that - I slept like a baby... But in the morning it was still raining, an everything was wet, wet, wet. So last breakfast here in Pokka, with some mustikka-munkki (~ Blueberry-Doughnut, Krapfen mit Heidelbeerfülle) and kaakao.

Right when I wantet to start, there was no more rain. yippie! I just WANTED to go on, through this beautiful landscape. Hills. Lakes. Swamps. Rocks. Dead Trees. Reindeers. *sigh*

My knees: perfect.
My mind: perfect.
Weather: ok.
Wind: sometimes no wind, sometimes little wind in the face. But because of the wind for the first day for a long time I really could sit down for having lunch, without moskitos.

Passing the län's border (Kari and I used the swedish words, because I knew them: län and kommun. In German it is something like Bundesland and Bezirk.) I noticed all thinkgs that Kari told me, that I will find: Reindeers cannot go everywhere they want. There are fences. And when a street passes a fence, there were plastic bands and some more creative methods to fear the reindeers, so they won't go to a foreign län. Today I saw the "sluice" ("Schleuse") with the motion-detector-controlled mp3-Player (? Something like that) with the sounds of a barking dog (see picture below).

This day I wanted to go to Lake Inari. I arrived at Lake Inari.
And then I decided, that I still can go on. for 30 more km. Only a few days before I noticed that the distance from Karigasniemi (Border between Norway and Finnland) to Northcape is 292 km. Initially I planned to to that stage in two days. (That was before I knew that it is 292 km...). 150 km per day?...? Now I thought: If would not stop at Karigasniemi but at Karasjok, it would be only ~ 260 km to northcape. a thing that seemed to be possible: 130 km per day. So today I did 30 more km for going further also tomorrow.

The camping was the cheapest ever: 3,5 Euro for me, my bike and my tent. But it looked like that... ;o)