After a very comfortable and cosy sleep in the huge wooden bed we woke up at 7.30 still in pitch black.  The sun only comes up about 10.30 and goes again around 2.

We had a quick shower and dressed and walked to reception for breakfast. I had a lucky escape, I almost put some Arctic Chard on my plate but couldn’t get it out the pot but then realised it was Arctic Char, a pickled fish not the vegetable I thought! 

At 9.15 we went off to collect our clothing which happened to be in the building next to reception. We were given extra socks (always 2 layers of socks!), snow boots with liners, an all in one suit and over gloves. We went back to the cabin and put our bottom ski layers under our new clothing and set off to explore. 

We did a short walk down to the frozen river where you can have a dip in if you fancy it (we didn’t). After crossing the frozen river we then followed the snowmobile tracks through the trees. It wasn’t long until we came across a small herd of reindeer and managed to get quite close to them.  We carried on for about a mile before turning around and retracing our steps. Even though it was quite cold -5, we were warm in our snow gear. 

Reception is the only place you can get wifi, so we popped back there to save our walk on Strava and have a drink. 

We popped back to the cabin to remove our all in ones and have a quick read, before having lunch. The food’s pretty good but there is generally only 2 choices of starter, mains and dessert. On the way to lunch the clouds had finally cleared and it was a lovely blue sky but by the time we finished lunch you could see it was already beginning to darken. 

We had snowshoeing booked for 2pm so we layered up and met our guide (from Venezuela) at reception. There were 11 of us in total and he quickly got us strapped into our snowshoes and we were off.  First across the frozen river and then straight into the trees. We found the reindeer from this morning and our guide said it’s the first time he had seen a white one.  We walked just over a mile and a third in total, with a pitstop for hot glogi and cookies halfway round. It also began snowing and a couple of inches fell just whilst we were walking. 

By 4pm we were back at reception with it feeling so much later as it was pitch black. Definitely time for some hot chocolates. 

Having at least an hour to kill before dinner we decided to try out the sauna in our cabin. Not realising it took 45mins to warm up so I had a quick power nap first whilst Dave read.

I’m really not a fan of saunas so didn’t actually spend to long in it after all, we then showered and got ready for dinner. 

The choices tonight: Arctic Char or Reindeer. We tried both and preferred the Reindeer (sorry Rudolph!)

Another quick change into all our layers and we were off for the evening activity of Aurora hunting by snowmobile. After a quick safety briefing we were off at a fairly leisurely pace. Unfortunately it was very cloudy so we wouldn’t be seeing any Aurora tonight so our guide took us on an extra long run.  After an hour or so he gave us a very interesting talk on how Aurora are formed and then we headed back to the hotel at what seemed like break neck speed although Dave said we only got to 39km per hour!  He needs to try sitting on the back! 

A couple of night caps were needed at the bar including an alcoholic version of the glogi before turning in for the night.