As said in the previous post we started in Helsinki, the city ambiance was quite laid back and nice, but we were not overly impressed by what it had to offer. What impressed us though was the size of the ferries linking the city to Talinn.
We spent the next day on the island of Suomenlinna, a fortress guarding the entrance to the port of Helsinki. The fortress contains a small city, mostly occupied by old military blocks, defenses and a dry dock that was built by connecting 2 small islands. It's a nice place to have a relaxing walk looking at older architecture.
We originally had planned to stay for most of the vacations in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) but we decided that it would be stupid to pass in Finland without seeing a bit of the Lakes area. On the way to the lakes we made a stop in the very cute little town of Porvoo.
We arrived in the lake district's through the capital: Savonlinna (Newcastle in Swedish) also known for its medieval castle that was guarding the border of the kingdom with Russia then.
The next morning we headed to the Linansaari national park with the intent to rent a canoe to explore the wilderness. They were out of canoes but convinced us easily that what we wanted was a 2-sitter kayak in which we could easily put all our camping gear and go for a multi-day expedition in the park. They provided us with a map with the list of islands where there was a camp spot. We originally wanted to go for 2 days only - we were kind of short on food and water for longer - but we decided we would go for 3 and would stop on the main island where there was a well to refill water and a cafe where hopefully we could munch. So yeah we left for 3 days with supplies for half of that, but it would have taken us half a day to get back to a supermarket and come back to the lake.
We headed "straight" towards the island where we intended to camp the first night which was about 10 miles away. Yes "straight" because it's actually pretty hard to actually go straight on a lake in a kayak, not get lost between the multitude of look-alike islands. Honestly, without the map + compass we would have had quite a tough time. We decided to stop on the first island that had a camp spot just to check how it looked like as it was our first experience with the Finnish national parks. We were blown away by the accommodations we found there. You could only set 3-4 tents maximum on that island but you had a small woden shed with pre-cut wood, an axe, a saw, dry toilets with a reserve a toilet paper, a fire pit with a grill, a kettle and a pan for cooking.
This comforted us quite a bit as we were a bit nervous heading out deep in the wilderness, far from everything with nothing else than what we had in our kayak. We made it to our camp where we were joined by a French guide with his 2 daughters. That evening, he was teaching them to fish and I proceeded to scale, gut and cook their fish on the fire. We were gratified by a wonderful sunset, and played cards (tarot) with them until midnight and it was probably the night we went to bed the latest of the entire trip :).
The next morning we hiked around the island for a few hours in order to refill our water supply and get some food. Despite the rationing we were already very low on supplies and we were getting quite hungry. It was with great pleasure that we made it to the little cafe on the other side of the island. We ordered pretty much one of each of their snacks including one with freshly smoked fish from the lake (she fired up the smoker at 9 am just for us). It tasted amazing ! We then went and tried to buy supply but were quite disappointed as they seem to only offer candy and chips. Almost only as I spotted on the top shelf a tin can with no sticker that had just "Moose" written on it with a sharpie. That moose can ended up being one of our favorites culinary memories of Finland (with the locks - smoked salmon - which was absolutely amazing, the best we ever ate, ever ever). So we bought that can of moose, convinced her to sell us some of the bread she had to make sandwiches and we were now ready to continue, not hungry anymore and quite happy.
We headed to another island, about 10 miles from the first one again and this time we were all alone at the camp even though a sailboat had anchored on the other side of our tiny island and a wild party seemed to be going on there. That night we bathed for a second day in the lake, had fire toasted moose sandwiches and slept like babies as paddling for hours is quite something on the upper body. The next day we headed back to the park entrance and decided we would try another national park instead of going to Estonia as it was really fun. That day was quite windy and we discovered how much easier it was to paddle on a flat lake instead of fighting with waves.
We drove north to Karelia, right at the border with Russia and I'll tell you more about it soon. In the mean time you can look at all the Finnish photo album here.
