The alarm was set reasonably early but as usual, when we are here in Venejärvi, it's hard to get out of bed. After putting the alarm on snooze a couple of times, we finally dragged ourselves out of bed. We needed to be up early too, this wasn’t just a run of the mill day when time wasn’t so important. We had to get from the depths of the Lappish forest, way up inside the Arctic Circle, to Helsinki. This journey was the first leg of a very long s...

When we started this trip back in January last year, we seemed to have all the time in the world. We had a few flights booked to get around Scandinavia and the UK and, of course, the flight to Mexico to start the adventure properly. Once in Mexico though, we simply took each day as it came, we had nine months to get to Argentina so why plan too much ahead of time. Admittedly, the last few weeks in South America were a bit frantic as we tried to cram in as much as...

It was toasty warm in the apartment when we woke and it didn't look so bad when we looked out the window either. Sure there was a bit of snow on the trees and the branches were moving a bit in the wind, but then we looked at the thermometer. Minus 25c!! David double checked the temperature on the weather site and discovered that yes, it was -25c, but with the wind the Real Feel temperature was body numbing -32c. We would be putting on an extra layer today before ...

It had only been a few days since arriving back in Kemi, to Maria's mums, but there was a need to get flights booked back to New Zealand. One of the conditions of David’s Long Term Leave was that he must be available for work at ASB on the 26th of January – a little over 2 weeks away. It wasn’t that the task of booking flights was being deliberately put off; it was more to do with having no internet access over the last couple of weeks while we...

The repaired airbed worked a treat last night and by the time we woke in the morning it was still fully inflated. It was David's birthday, but it wasn’t going to be a big deal. Just a lazy day that started off with coffee and porridge before writing some more of the blog. Slowly but surely, it’s getting back up to date. We went out for lunch with the family at a nice pizza place, Puistopaviljonki, where we have been before. We both kept to a Lappish ...