From Kuusamo via Helsinki and Oslo to Bodø

The alarm rings early today, because we have a long way ahead of us: from Kuusamo via Helsinki and Oslo to Bodø. We eat something at the Airbnb and then free the car from its layer of ice. Today is especially cold, the thermometer reads -33 degrees. After just the short spell of ice-scraping without gloves, our hands freeze properly solid. Refuelling the car at the ice-cold pump is the next challenge waiting on our way to Kuusamo airport. We drop off the car and are glad to step into the warm terminal. The joy doesn’t last long: just as we clear security, we get a text saying our flight from Kuusamo to Helsinki has been cancelled. Great, so much for today’s journey, we think. Straight away we get another message saying we’ve automatically been rebooked onto the next flight. All the flights we had booked together were shifted automatically. Unfortunately, we booked the leg from Oslo to Bodø separately, so that one we now have to pay for out of our own pocket and find an alternative ourselves. After some searching we find a good option, expensive, but it fits the timing of our changed flights, and we should still arrive in Bodø the same day. Despite the early start, we now leave Kuusamo later than planned.

At half past eleven we take off and land on time in Helsinki. We have lunch at a Burger King and then fly on to Oslo. Before that flight, though, our plane first has to be driven to a de-icing station, the kind of thing you only get in the far north, we think. All the movable exterior parts of the aircraft are sprayed down with de-icing fluid before we take to the air. In Oslo we have enough time to find some dinner and eat it before, after the next round of de-icing, we’re airborne again, once more heading for the far north. If there were a direct flight from Kuusamo to Bodø we’d have arrived in an hour. Instead our journey takes a whole day. We arrive in Bodø tired, collect our suitcases, which, contrary to our fears, actually made it there too, and get into a Tesla taxi that takes us to our Radisson Blu hotel. Once there, we dive into the cosy bed and fall asleep instantly.