Day 8
¤ Saying our goodbyes to Nellim =(
Bye, Nellim squirrel~
¤ After breakfast, we made a 2-hour journey to Inari, one of the largest villages in the Inari municipality. As for population density, "largest" is pretty much an over-statement. The whole population in Inari can fit nicely in my neighbourhood...
Nonetheless, the Inari village has a town center, which might be small but packs a punch. So, welcome back to civilization! =P
Modern hotel
Supermarket and convenience store!
Their small buildings are equally cute as Nellim's
Another quaint church :)
Horse-riding nearby? Look, there're sleds!
¤ Our hotel was beside a river and the view of broken river ice slabs was breathtaking.
¤ The night was so clear tonight that I mistook the full moon for a street lamp when we stepped out of the hotel reception after dinner... The guys were again very excited for such a clear night but... I came down with a fever and felt too sick to join them. I took some paracetamol meds and slept through the night... =(
Day 9
¤ I felt much better today. The guys told me that I didn't miss anything the night before.. Coz there wasn't any aurora. Ahhh.. But the sky this morning didn't look good. Cloudy.
¤ We visited the Siida Musuem today. We had a deeper insight about the history, economy and geography of Inari. Spent our whole day there. We're like school children again. haha. And it snowed pretty heavily outside..
Cute baby wolverines.. There were tons of such fake animals around the exhibits.
Retro snow mobile
I actually find this kinda cute...
Woof! Statue outside the museum
¤ By the time we left the museum, it's already late afternoon. It's stopped snowing. Looking up, half the sky's covered with clouds while the sky over at the river side was clearing up..
While walking back to our hotel rooms (by the river), we heard what sounded like a low "boom". A little hard to describe how it sounded, but looks like the ice was breaking! It's pretty scary actually. And we suddenly were able to hear river flowing!!
One of these ice slabs broke??
¤ During dinner, I went to check spaceweather.com again. Good news! There was a sudden disturbance in Earth's magnetic field! For no apparent reason! Some parts of Finland had already caught some glimpses of the aurora. Looking out of the restaurant window, I was all hyped up to see the sky was clear! But it was still a little too bright (at 8pm!) for aurora viewing.
We waited a little longer and were contented to have a good ending to our little Lapland journey.
Fail? I tried to snap a photo without the tripod.. That's my friend in the middle..
My best attempt at trying to keep still....
Okay, nice clear photo from XB
Gotta love the swirls
This was when the light show came to a climax. Half of the sky was covered with aurora and the edge was really intense and moving really fast!
My friend went out earlier than us and he managed to catch the rare red color in the aurora!
An amazing shot that my friend took of the heavens and aurora
And for the comet-buffs, can you spot PANSTARRS? (Enlarge the photo)
After this episode of nothing happened while I was sick but we were given the gift of a magnificent light show on the last night when I was well, it really makes me wonder.. God works in mysterious ways huh?
Day 10
¤ Had our last breakfast and lunch at Inari today. Made our last minute shopping before heading back to Ivalo Airport to get on our flight back to Singapore, transiting at Helsinki.
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