Of Magical Ponds and the tripod hunt

Sleeping in this Magical Pond cabin is simply wonderful. Waking up to a view of snow-covered trees is just brilliant. Today it’s quite overcast and easily -10 °C, but that makes it all the cosier inside.

Breakfast is served in the main house. It is a delicious buffet with everything you could wish for. Afterwards we make the most of the few daylight hours and rent snowshoes. A couple of snowshoe trails start right at the cabin and, as we later find out, there’s also a cross-country ski track and snowmobile trails. We stomp through densely snow-covered forests and pass a reindeer and husky farm. The dogs get all excited whenever they’re allowed to pull a sled, while the reindeer lie comfortably in their stables. We don’t go on a dog sled tour yet. Hopefully we’ll get to do one another day.

In the afternoon we’re back in our cabin and take some photos of the accommodation. Towards evening we drive to the neighbouring village of Ruka to look for a tripod for Annina, since hers unfortunately stayed at home. When we come up empty-handed, we continue to Kuusamo, and indeed, in the very last shop we try, there is exactly one tripod left! Happy that we can now photograph the northern lights, should they appear, we drive back to our warm accommodation. Of course it has long since got dark by now. In the evening we make ourselves properly comfortable and eat in the dark so we definitely won’t miss any northern lights. Although it isn’t cloudy, the aurora is unfortunately so faint that even the camera can barely capture it. Hopefully we’ll have more luck in the coming days.