Europe 2015: Finland - Ivalo

Day two of our whirlwind European tour begins with a flight to Northern Finland which is well within the Arctic Circle. We land at the small Ivalo airport and throw on our winter coats as we need to make it across the snow covered tarmac into the airport terminal. Fortunately, we have arranged for a taxi to get us to our lodging for the next 2.5 days - the amazing Guesthouse Husky.

The Guesthouse Husky, like many of the houses in Ivalo stands out in the snow with its wood panelled red exterior, sloping roof and Christmas lights. As our car pulls up into the driveway, we are greeted by Outi, one half of the couple running the guesthouse. Outi shows us around the house to where meals are served, the sauna where you can book in your own time slots for privacy, the shared kitchen where you can prepare your own meals if you choose and of course our room. The rooms are cosy with raw wooden panels making up the walls and with modern features such has ducted heating (fortunately!), bathrooms with heated floors and a rain shower, which we can attest works extremely well. Our room overlooks the area where the huskies are kept and throughout our stay, we can hear them quietly through the walls howling or barking when reindeer or other wildlife wander past.

We arrive early in the afternoon and have nothing planned until after dinner, nor is there much to do when it is -3 degrees in Finland's countryside, so we hole up in the warmth of the guesthouse and relax for the afternoon. Dinner is served at 6pm, a 3-course home cooked meal starting with a quiche, then a traditional reindeer and cheese soup with home baked bread, all topped off with a baked apple crumble and vanilla ice cream.

The Guesthouse Husky and Night #1 Dinner

After dinner, it is time for our first activity - Aurora Hunting. Before our tour starts, we rug up as much as we can. We know we will be outdoors and at 6:30pm, the temperature is already dipping below -5 degrees celcius. Our guide arrives to pick us up and we pile into a van with 4 others. We drive for about 30 mins before our guide pulls over at a dead end road. We jump out and the other participants start setting up some semi-professional DSLR cameras. The simpletons we are, we only have our point and shoot and do not bother taking any photos, deciding to rely on our guide instead. We get a few short bursts of faint light, but have to push on to try to catch the lights elsewhere. Another 30 or so minutes in the van and we pull over. Our guide advises that we are expecting some good activity over the next hour. The result of standing out in the cold are in the photos below, which along with any other photo you've ever seen of the Northern Lights, are COMPLETE LIES. The Northern Lights that you see in the photos are nothing like what we saw in person. In person, they were faint streaks moving in the sky, barely visible. With a DLSR with an open lens and a long exposure, the results are stunning. But, we are still not 100% convinced that it was worth standing in the -8 degrees celcius.

The next morning, we wake up excited and jittery, ready to go for our next adventure - Husky Sledding! The first step before husky sledding is to don the proper gear. We put on our thermals, ski pants and gloves. It doesn't sound like much, and we actually are wearing less then we did the night before, but this is because we are provided some serious cold weather wear by our guides: balaclavas to be worn under our beanies, thick and waterproof snow suits, bulky mittens to be worn over our gloves, woollen socks and sturdy wool-lined snow boots.

Once we are rugged up, it is time to step out to begin our dog sledding lessons. At -5 degrees celcius, our guide begins by telling us that he's disappointed with how warm it is. He then demonstrates how to drive our team of six dogs - lean hard into corners, always follow the hand signals that are passed down the line, break on downhills and help the dogs by jumping off the sled and pushing on the uphills.

All rugged up and ready to go - us and the dogs!

We start off with Tim driving driving, Ness snuggled into the furs in the sled's passenger seat. We quickly learn that the person in the sled gets cold, while the person driving the sled gets hot. It's hard work leaning the sled into corners to avoid branches and to prevent the sled from going off-road and/or tipping. It's especially hard work running hard while pushing the sled on the up-hills.

Partway through our journey, we swap drivers. Shortly after the swap, as luck would have it, our two front dogs suddenly find issue with each other and get into a wrestling match. Our sled is pulled off the track, the dogs' harnesses become tangled and one breaks. Too far down the road, our guides don't hear us call out. But we wait it out and one of them comes back running when they notice that we, along with one other team who was travelling behind us, are missing. Our guide roughly ties the broken harness together and drives our sled to the rest of the team. For us to keep going, the alpha-male on our sled has to be swapped with another to keep the rest of the team in line.

Riding in sleds with dogs

Our new leader keeps the team in check and we soon arrive at our lunch rest stop - a teepee erected in the snow. While our guide prepares our food, we decide to spend some time playing with our dogs. Our dogs are Alaskan Huskies, which are not considered a pure breed, but rather they are defined by their purpose, which is that of a highly efficient sled dog. The Alaskan Husky is a blend of various Nordic breeds, chosen particularly for skills such as pulling and team player abilities. They are also smaller, and not as pretty as their Siberian Husky or Malamute counterparts which feature prominently in movies and pictures. Another interesting thing is that these dogs are not that playful and do not yearn for human attention as much as the usual domesticated dogs. These dogs want just one thing - to run.

Our team of six #teamquakies

The lunch teepee is a large structure, with six benches around a roaring fireplace. Our guide has one large pot and two kettles suspended over the flames and is literally cooking our lunch over the fire. It is salmon soup with carrots and potatoes. After a deliciously warm bowl of soup topped off with coffee and tea, we are ready for the journey home - and so are the dogs as is indicated by their eager howls and barking. It's 2:30pm, sun is setting and we glide along the sledding routes in the twilight. The last light of the sun paints the sky a dull pink as we journey across the frozen river.

Our teepee in the middle of the snow. There is even and outhouse with a drop toilet available.

Cooking our soup and boiling water for coffee and tea over an extremely large yet comforting fire.

Creamy salmon soup cooked over the fire.

In what feels like no time at all, we're soon back at Guesthouse Husky and have to say thanks and goodbye to our dogs. We spend a good 10 minutes mucking around with the dogs and some new puppies before heading inside for another delicious three course meal. Tonight's meal is cauliflower soup, followed by beef stew, with a fresh berry cream dessert. Blissfully full, we head to bed for our last night in Ivalo.