We spent three days at the Ruunaan Matkailu Holiday Village on a lake in Eastern Finland. The food was traditional Finnish, hearty and tasty. We had Kareelian Pie, salmon, vendace, hearty rye bread and always a dessert. The owners dogs roam free and were a welcome sight each morning to those of us missing our own dogs as we walked to breakfast. The Samoyed’s with their happy faces would run to greet us while the Finnish Spitz were a bit more aloof but very talkative and seemed to be on various important missions around the property.
The Finns are fastidious people and always remove their shoes upon entering a home, our guide, Anton Hill, taught us. We’d leave our shoes on the covered porch of our cabins. After seeing one Samoyed steal first a water bottle and then a laptop from one of our tripmates in an impromptu game of chase, we began bringing our shoes inside.
On Tuesday, we hiked. Part of hiking in Finland is often crossing a lake or river in a row boat to pick up the other side of your trail. There are two row boats (and various life vests), on on either side of shore that you use to get across. This requires a team of two or more people or a rope to tow one boat to the other side because you have to leave one boat on each side for the next foot traveler who needs to cross. So two or more row across, get the other boat and take it back, and then head back to the other side in one boat. Joe was our main rower and got everyone across efficiently. After our day’s wander, we were given a hands-on lesson in making Gravlax then fired up the sauna in our cabin for our first Finnish sauna experience. The sauna was heated by a wood fired stove and hot. I personally did not sweat, but Joe was beaded up with it in short order. The temperature was about 150 degrees.
On Wednesday, we hiked just under 5 miles and examined various flora, heard our first cuckoo bird, saw many ant hills, including one as tall as a man and at least 5 feet in diameter. Then we hopped in a wooden boat and shot the Ruunaan Rapids. Halfway thru our ride down the river we stopped and were treated to a hearty lunch of fish chowder, bread, Kareelian Pie, coffee, cake, and some conversation around a fire.
Meanwhile, back at the holiday village, the proprietors had started the smoke sauna at 7am for us to enjoy upon our return. A smoke sauna is a special kind of sauna experience, not an everyday type of sauna. Preparation involves burning a fire under the rocks in the smoke sauna and keeping the fire going for about 7 hours. Then they let the fire go out, and the smoke dissipate. Then it is ready to use. The hot rocks are what heats the sauna. Throwing water on the rocks intensifies the heat. If you touch anything, what you touched it with becomes covered in black soot. We took little paper mats in to sit on, and when you couldn’t take the heat anymore, you left the sauna and then jumped, slid, stood in the freezing lake water. Our guide told us to have the true Finnish experience you had to repeat this sequence three times. I managed twice, Joe all three. There was also a traditional Finnish hot tub “palju”, which was a 8 person tub of water heated with a wood fire. No bubbles. The Gravlax we made the day before served as an appetizer.
We’ve truly experienced the first finish saying we learned. We were in no hurry for the past three days, we were not on the back of a rabbit.
Words of Wanderers 