Canoe tour, day 1

The canoe tour we are doing is called the Wanha Witonen route, and it was immortalized on the Finnish 5-markka bill before the euro was introduced. The markers showing the stopping points therefore look like this:


Very shortly (and I mean literally less than 10 minutes) after pushing off comes the first marker, denoting the stopping point for the Petäjävesi Old Church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My own pictures are somewhat lame, there seem to be better ones at the church site linked above.


After visiting the church, we proceeded onward. One thing that struck us both during the entire time in Finland was a notable absence of megafauna. We never saw deer, moose, bear, or other large mammals, and even only rarely small ones. We never saw any sort of large raptors (eagles, falcons, etc). Finns we asked about this said that more of that could probably be seen closer to the Russian border, or further north. So wildlife pictures will be in fairly short supply.

We camped at a stopping point called Lapinkoski. After a fairly uneventful evening, which included a visit to the camp by an extended family who lived upstream somewhere in a cabin, we went to bed fairly early. This is because we set the alarm for 2:00 AM.