Today is the day

Place: Ivalo

Tune of the day: CMX - Baikonur

Other tunes: Armin van Buuren so loud that you can feel it in your fillings

Today it all begins. Four hundred and something km to Nordkapp and some way back to a fishing village thing. The weather looks like it will be miserable and we will probably be wet from the morning onwards. The forecast varies depending on who you ask. The best case scenario is that we will be wet and miserable tomorrow.

Whatever the conditions are, Nordkapp will be a kick-off to this adventure and as such quite an event.

Some scenery.

More scenery.

There were two signs like this in the sauna - in french! WTF!

View of the road.

More scenery from the road.

Bikes at the hotel. Looks good.

The reindeer packed again.

An easy day of driving yesterday through Finnish Lapland with excellent scenery. All the colours of Autumn in almost full "bloom" if that's the right word. About 300km. The trees have no leaves anymore up here and there are more and more open areas with nothing growing but some shrubs. The cows on the patches of grass are much smaller then I remember they were, they are grey and have big antlers. It must be the temperature.


One can tell the experienced riders from the inexperienced based on the amount of stuff that they are carrying. I have waaay too many bags and things and the panniers are way too wide.
 
The bikes are now plastered with Transafrica-stickers and we have become very popular with the yobbos in Ivalo. In the evening eighteen year old kids in cars older than themselves driving around the hotel parking lot like it's fucking Le Mans. Don't they have anything better to do. At least all the bikes were still there in the morning and I suspect that these bikes will yet be eyed by people far more suspicious than these.