World Adventure

Dear All,

We had to move out from our cosy little family run accommodation to move into Rudolf hostel which strangely enough was associated with the Santa claus hotel. Lame but true. It only had a check in at 2pm so we killed a little time by booking on a 2hr skidoo safari. We had a bit of  time to kill before the safari so watched another giant snowman being constructed  in town,I think that the count was up to at least 3, before walking down to the mostly frozen river running beside the town. A quick fitting out with gear and a 5km drive out of town, a lesson on skidoo riding and I had Vanessa on the seat behind me and we headed out with our guide and a spanish couple. We were competing with the same area as the reindeer safaris, huski safaris and other skidoo safaris. It wasn't long before we had to brake and stop fo a convoy of husky teams crossing our path and a little later a convoy of reindeer teams coming directly at us forcing me to remember, from the training, where the reverse on the skidoo was located. We narrowly avoided the head on collision and reindeer sausages for lunch as the reindeer slowly plodded on. Still it was nice to be out in the forest with snow covered trees and it did have the feeling of remoteness. A nice way to kill a bit of time.

We got back and checked in to the hostel and found that the heating didn't work. The place seems to have a bit of an identity crisis  as it is neither a hotel or a hostel and is basically totally unmanned with swipe cards getting you access into and out of the buildings It was a bit half assed and we were a bit jaded after the cosiness of the other room. We were also annoyed that it was it was costing us more! We took advantage of the kitchen and someone elses rice, probably abandoned, and cooked ourselves a chicken curry. Yum. Then settled in for a session of mindless serials on the television such as desperate housewives and sex in the city. Sadly they were the only shows in english. Discovery channel where were you?

Somehow we drew ourselves away from the television to learn a little russian language such as hello and goodbye and started learning the cyrillic alphabet. My memory jogger for the cyrillic characters that match english letters is 'talk to tom'. I feel like russian is double encoded. Firstly in the characters and secondly in the words. So it will be a bit of a challenge.

We have been putting together a itinerary for Tibet and have costed it. .There are two kinds of permits required (Tibet visa) for traveling in Tibet: the entry permit (TTB permit)and the Alien's travel permit (PSB permit).Another region that does not allow us to be spontaneous so we have spent a few weeks planning but it should be worth the effort

We went out and found the open air ice skating riink and wached for a while beforee heading back to the room The maintenance man supposedly fixed the heating in the room but I am not convinced as it was still only luke warm . Lucky there is under floor heating in the bathroom and heated towel racks so if you left the door open their heat is sufficient to warm the air.

Cloudy again so any hope of seeing an aurora has been squashed which is a real pity as statistically there is an aurora just about every second night.

We were alerted to a potential  problem with one of our mastercards. The bank informed us that a merchant in Spain had been compromised and because we had purchased from this merchant  mastercard wanted  to protect themselves and us by cancelling everyones  cards. Bad timing as we are heading into Russia in two days. We will get it replaced.

Next day.

It has been pretty warm the last couple of days with the temperature hovering around -2 deg C. I wandered down to McDonalds with the laptop and checked the emails and them walked back in a heavy but short lived snow fall.

Another long train trip today. Leaving at midday and will get to Helsinki at 1048pm. Then we will be off to the international airport as we have an early morning flight to St Petersburg and it will hardly be worth the effort finding accommodation.  

Bye,
David and Vanessa