The New Pohjola Route
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Summer has been quite amazing and warm this year! We’ve had almost tropical temperatures. With that in mind, we decided to pack our summer clothes, swimsuits and hiking gear and head north once again. Oulu region had just opened its new Pohjola Route and we wanted to see what it was about. We knew that the area has beautiful landscape and many hidden gems, so it was time to see them for ourselves!
We started our trip from Ii and we had a sweet little walk around Hiastinhaara after our arrival. The river and beach by the parking lot was so welcoming, but we had to keep going after the walk towards our next destination, a place that I had passed by so many times, without stopping. Finally, I was able to go and see the rapids of Koitelinkoski! As I expected, they were marvelous! It was surely a nice day and we finished it with a little biking trip around Oulu.
After a relaxing morning and a nice visit to Oulu Botanical Garden, we headed to catch our ferry to Hailuoto!
It was another amazing place I had been wanting to visit for so long - even just the ferry ride was an experience itself. We made it straight to Marjaniemi, where the beautiful sandy beach was waiting for us in a warm sunny day. We picked up our picnic basket and headed to the beach.
Unfortunately we couldn’t stay in Hailuoto for the night as it was time to hit the road again. It was a hot day, so a stop in Kempele for some ice cream was very welcome and a brief visit to the famous Liminka Birdwatching Tower was really nice. It was getting late and “the Captain’s Sauna” was heated just for us in a gorgeous historical neighborhood in Raahe, so there was no time to spare.
The next day was once again a beautiful one, but very windy. Our stop in the marvelous sandy beaches of Kalajoki had to cut short and skip swimming this time. Luckily, we had picked up a kite on the way down, so it became our main activity there and a fun way to go to enjoy the beach for a little while.
Rokua and Syöte were calling, so we had to go! We were kind of excited to drive inland and see some forests and fells. First stop was Rokua Geopark. At our arrival, the weather was beautiful, so we decided to go and visit Pookivaara and the fire watch tower. The sunset turned out to be magical, so it was definitely worth it!
Last but not least was Syöte area, which is less known for most people from the south. It is definitely a nice destination in summer and winter. The experience we had here and our stay in the Hotel Iso-Syöte definitely have definitely set this place on the map for me!
To summarise, it was an incredible fun trip with several places worth visiting. Hopefully, you’ll find some nice tips to go and visit the new #pohjolanrengastie!
The active side of Slovenia
Our awesome travel crew got a chance to go and visit Slovenia and especially the Triglav National Park area not far from Ljubljana. We wanted to go and explore the more active side of Slovenia as our preferred accommodation was mountain cabins rather than comfortable spa hotels in these beautiful towns in the middle of the mountains.
For sure we were going to visit the towns also with their well known sights. But our main goal for the trip, was to do two longer overnight hikes.
Our first hike was to make it to the Seven Lakes of Triglav and staying in the Koca pri Triglavskih jezerih mountain hut for the night. The hike was a beautiful 8km one way path with 900m of elevation climb. We took it pretty slow to enjoy the views and shoot some photos while hiking. The cabin is located by a lake between high rising mountains, which makes it a breathtaking place. Next morning we took a little different route back to our car with also very incredible views!
Our main goal was to hike to the Triglav Lodge on Kredarica, next to the highest peak in Slovenia which summit stands at 2864m. The hike was going to be very nice, but the weather wasn't looking too promising for us. We still wanted to go as there are some mountain huts on the way, where we could find shelter if the weather turned bad.
The hike is around 12km long, but the 1500m ascent makes it pretty exhausting with all the camera gear. We started the hike at noon and the weather was really nice. You could feel that the storm was coming as the weather started to feel very oppressive. We made it for late lunch in the midway hut, when the first small storm hit us. We waited it out and continued with fairly nice weather towards our destination Kredarica Hut. The last bit of the hike is also super nice and another storm hit like 5 minutes before reaching the hut, so we made it just in time and were able to get our stuff to dry out in the hut.
When we were in the hut us boys were really up for summiting the Triglav the next morning. It is a pretty mentally demanding and scary climb, but definitely doable if you have any experience and good gear. Around half of the people who go up wear Via Ferrata equipment. We had a chat with the lodge host, who said we'd be fine with helmets there as it's also very much faster to do it. We wanted to reach the summit before the sunrise, so saving time was important. We'd have a long hike ahead of us the same day too.
We started the climb at 4 am and it was nice to see in the total darkness how there were others going up too from the small headlamps on the wall. It was really exhausting and demanding climb. We reached the summit just in time for the sunrise and it was totally worth it! One amazing experience for the books!
We got to see other things too on our days in the valley and Lake Bohinj, Lake Bled and Soca Valley were definitely my favorites! I highly recommend going to Slovenia for a trip. It's still fairly untouristy and people are super friendly!
-Daniel
Hiking the W-Trek in Torres del Paine, Patagonia
Traveling to South America had been a dream of mine for many many years. A little bit over a year ago me and my trusted adventure friends Hannes, Eeva and Daniel got serious about this idea to go and hike the W-trek in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. It took quite a while to actually get things sorted out and decide a good time to go. We needed to get our busy schedules match and pick a good time so the fall colors would be in full action.
Getting there is not the easiest thing in the world and our last minute rental car cancellation due to no border crossing with this company gave us few extra bumps for the preparation. Me and Eeva flew from Finland and met up with Daniel in Madrid airport to catch the flight together to Santiago and then Punta Arenas. Flights went well and we arrived in Chile and took a bus to our first accommodation in Puerto Natales after about a 3 hour bus ride. Hannes was waiting us there as he had been traveling around the area for a week after his trip to the Antarctica.
We had few days to prepare before heading to the national park and we needed to gather all the food and other missing equipment, which turned out to be a quite challenging task as it was Easter. Luckily at the end we had all things collected and were able to head out for our 6 days adventure in the park.
The trek was super nice with amazing views that kept you going although the hike was quite hard from time to time. We were camping the whole trip in our tents so we were carrying all the camp gear needed and food for the whole time. We got were really lucky with the weather and it only rained a little bit twice or so. We actually ended up sleeping one night in a cabin on the way as the wind got over 40m/s for the night. I'm very sure our nice Fjällräven Dome tent could've taken the beating, but sleep quality would've suffered for sure and Daniel's tent couldn't take it as he had some competitor tent in use... HAHA! But yeah, this kind of hiking is not the best place to have lack of sleep, so we made a common decision to spend the night in a nice and warm cabin.
The hike went well until the last two days as my knee was kind of feeling it and it got really painful to make the last part of the hike. Eeva had also been having issues with her back. We made our way to the Dome Hotel where we had a nice relaxing night with hot showers before heading out from the park.
After hiking in Torres del Paine, it was time to pick up a rental car from Puerto Natales and drive up to El Chalten in Argentina for some hiking around Mt. Fitz Roy. We were still kind of feeling the hike from Chile and couldn't do all the hikes we had planned. We were happy to make it to the Cerro Torre for a night hike dispite the painful trekking.
Enjoy the photos below!
