Country: Finland
Distance travelled: 81km
Weather: Raining

Once the mornings’ chores were done, we drove the short distance into Kemijärvi in search of an internet connection. It was probably time to start sorting out our planned trip to St Petersburg before we reached Helsinki. We had read about this on another blog and were keen to go ourselves. Apparently, if you take the ferry from Helsinki to St Petersburg and return the same way, you are allowed to spend seventy-two hours in Russia without the need of a visa.

We tried several locations and eventually found a free internet connection with a strong enough signal to allow for easy web searching. The St Peter Line website was carefully re-read and ferry times were checked. Prices for all inclusive packages were compared with ticket and accommodation prices. An email was sent to a bed and breakfast place I had found last year. Campsites in Helsinki were checked and I spent some more time on saint-petersburg.com website, which has some very unintentionally amusing reviews of local museums. With only seventy-two hours, I wanted to make sure we saw as much as we could.

Eventually we decided to go for a walk to investigate the singer we had been hearing most of the afternoon. He had been singing in english, I had recognised Cat Stevens at one point but by the time we walked over to the square, he had swapped to Finnish and was unintelligible to us. We stood listening for a few minutes then wandered off back to the van.

Another tank of fuel plus a top up of the fresh water tank saw us on our way toward Kuusamo. Not too far out of town, we pulled into a neat little rest stop separated from the road by a thick copse of trees. No tables, bins or amenities would make it less than attractive to most other travellers and the trees hid us from passers-by. I stepped outside to take the usual campsite photo and ran into a barrage of mosquitos. They were in my hair, my ears, on every bare patch of skin. I fled inside, swatting madly and warning Mark to stay strictly inside. A few mozzies forced their way in as I entered but Mark quickly dispatched them. We battened down, shutting windows and screens both, hoping for a cool night to offset the airlessness and slept.

Finland-3rd Night