So, we met up in Helsinki for the first time, got on with loading up the car and then started
the drive north towards Latland. This trip was a bit of an experiment really. There were
four of us, but we'd never really spoken before, we'd just swapped emails. The drive took over 16
hours, but eventually we were leaving the highways behind, moving on to small tracks that wound
through the forest and would take us towards the river and off Earth's campsite. As well as me,
we had Richard Madame, neither who have kayak before, and Duncan who's done tons of stuff,
including kayak and mountaineering expeditions all around the globe.
Cooking fish and steak in a tent because Finland is miserable with mosquitoes there.
So, we've been hiding in our tents for the last, well, all evening really, several hours.
Absolutely humming with mosquitoes outside. Worst I've ever seen. Spent a lot of time in
the Amazon as well. We're all dressed up like beekeepers when we want to go outside to do anything.
I decided to be a cheapskate instead and bring my own white water kayak out from the UK. Whilst
I may have saved a little money, I spent a lot of effort as a result. The cruising speed of
my boat was maybe half that of the green touring ones, and so the enjoyable paddle
everyone else had experienced was really just a bit of a marathon for me. We paddled for nine
days covering 300 kilometres, starting from the source of the river and travelling its entire
course until its confluence with the kemi near Rhoveniemi. The river was fairly easy going,
and the guys who hadn't paddled before showed a tremendous improvement. The entire trip was
absolutely beautiful. We paddled through these gorgeous pine forests the whole way. We could stop
and camp wherever we liked due to the Everyman's Law, which gives you a lot of freedom to fish and
camp and move around Finland. Loads of people were interested in this trip. There was this
romanticised idea of coming on a Lapland-ish adventure. But there's no reason why you can't
do this yourself. There are tons of brilliant wilderness opportunities on the Unis Jokey
and other rivers like it. So get out there, grab a gallon of mosquito repellent and give it a go.
