We slept at the Tupos gas stations back yard and woke up in the morning. We had no idea what the time was but it seemed morning enough and we had slept enough. We packed our gear and headed to the cafeteria for morning caffeine and bursted out laughing! It was only 6.30. This is no time for nerds to wake up, it should be a time to go to sleep! Nevertheless it was a beautiful morning and we itched to get to the road.
Our tent would become very familiar to us.
The road was not easy to get a ride from here. We had to try to get rides from the people who stopped at the gas station only. This would be very easy if you could take rides from the truckers but they can only take one in their cockpit.
We tried anyway! And we got a ride from a wide transport caravan. Taru got to ride with the truck and I was in the lead car that notified the drivers about up coming traffic and stopped the cars if necessary. Their route took us the scenic way up to Sodankylä. They had to go around Rovaniemi for 60 km just to be able to pass the city. Often the bridges were too low so the trucks had to drive a ramp up and down the wrong way. This meant that the guiding cars in the front and on the back had to stop the traffic for the trucks to pass. Traffic also had to be stopped when crossing narrow bridges.
There was a road work on our way. It would have taken too long to wait for them to finish so they filled up the hole on the road for the transportation.
It took the whole day to reach to Sodankylä but it definitely was worth it! You really saw the traffic in a different way after that. Usually people get annoyed or do not believe if they are instructed to wait for just a half a minute. Why are we all always in such a hurry?
They were transporting containers for a mine.
In Sodankylä it started pouring. We got a little too wet before we could run to the shelter of the gas station but after the rain we saw a beautiful rainbow with a upper halo and a inner halo too!
Sodankylä after rain.
But there was no more rides in the evening and we put our tent up for the night with the company of mosquitos and rain. It was a miracle we managed to keep a little dry.
Day 2 route:
