Our next adventure - Australia and New Zealand

Tomorrow we leave Sweden and fly to the west coast of Australia. We will spend almost 2 weeks driving from Perth in the south, to Port Hedlan in the north.
From Port Hedland we fly to New Zealand and will spend almost 3 weeks exploring both the south and the north island. In New Zealand we have rented a nice RV, and Anne´s oldest daughter Pernilla will join us for the first half of the NZ trip.
After New Zealand we will fly to Sydney and spend almost 2 weeks on the east coast of Australia.

2011-08-21 -- 2011-09-07: Finland and back home

We crossed the border to Finland - "The country of thousand lakes" - and headed for Inari. There were several places selling Sami craft-work, and at one of them we met a nice Sami man that gave us some advice were to camp for the night. It was a lovely place at the shore of Rahajärvi (Moneylake) with a lot of reindeer and very peaceful.

At a hill close to our camp we found the blueberries and the first ripe  lingon-berries for the season.

After a couple of nights we continued towards Ivalo to get some supplies, gasoline and fill water, before we head south through the amazing landscape with rivers and lakes everywhere. Finland is really beautiful!!!

At Rovaniemi we once again pass the Arctic Circle - this time from the north.

As everyone knows, Rovaniemi is the home of Santa Claus, and there is a huge village with shops built on the Christmas theme.

In Rovaniemi we had one of few nights in a commercial camping, just next to Kemi River and walking distance to city. Finland is very well known for two things - Sauna and Tango. During the time in Rovaniemi we experienced both. The camping had a wonderful sauna that we rented by the hour, and just a couple of hundred meters from the camping there was a restaurant with live tango music. We were amazed to see the mix of people on the dance floor. The most active couple was 80+, and the youngest around 25. All of them were there to dance!

When we travel we like to visit local markets. In Finland indoor markets are very common.

This one is in Oulo and offered fantastic seafood among other things.

Next stop was Kannus, where Anne´s roots on her mother side are from. In the area of Kannus we found amazing amounts of mushroom - Boletus edulis (Karl Johan svamp in Swedish, Steinpilz in German, Penny bun i English). We spent hours cleaning and cooking what we harvested.

We continue our trips towards Tampere to meet some of Anne´s relatives. It was nice to meet uncle Erkki and his wife Kajsa, as well as cousin Elina and her boyfriend Teppo. With some hints from the family we managed to find the place were Anne spent every summer when she was young. It was a place in the middle of the forest, so we had to do some walking as we didn´t dare to drive our big vehicle on the narrow and bumpy road.

Helsinki is our last stop in Finland. We had made reservation for the ferry to Stockholm in advance, but had 2 days for sightseeing in the beautiful capitol of Finland. One of the days we visited the old fortress Sveaborg, situated on an island just outside Helsinki. It was very interesting to visit this beautiful well preserved historic site.

Just next to where we parked for the nights in Helsinki, car fanatics gathered in the evening. Really cool to see all those amazing cars!

We spent a couple of days driving from Stockholm to our home in south of Sweden. We tried to avoid the larger roads and enjoyed the trip. 

We are very pleased with our 7 week long trip through Sweden, Norway and Finland. Scandinavia is fantastic!

For us it was the perfect choice to use a RV for the trip. It has given us so much freedom, and so many wonderful moments around a camp-fire just next to a lake or a river.


















Some more pictures: Nordic Trip Part 5