A New Year by Lake Inari

DEC 29

FLY TO YOUR DREAMS Leave Heathrow at 10.20 on Finnair scheduled flight(s) to Ivalo via Helsinki. Arrive 17.35 local time and transfer to Nellim. Check into your room, welcome drink, programme briefing and supper

DEC 30

MUSH A HUSKY TEAM After breakfast it’s time to meet Christopher’s pack of Alaskan huskies whose kennels in the forest are just a short walk from the hotel and whose excited barking slowly magnifies as you approach them. Adults mush their own team of dogs and children ride in a sleigh behind your guide and, as the dogs pull you along a snow-carpeted trail, the silence is broken only by the whooshing sound of the sleigh’s runners slicing through the snow. En route, enjoy a lunch cooked over an open fire.
FUN IN THE SNOW Later you spend an afternoon of games in the snow on the sloping bank running down to the lake with snow shoeing, tobogganing, ice fishing and reindeer lasso throwing practice. Traditional Sami buffet supper.

New Years Eve

SNOWMOBILE BY LAKE INARI After breakfast, climb aboard your snowmobile for a safari through the pine forests surrounding Lake Inari stopping for lunch washed down with hot berry juice around an open fire in a clearing in the forest and tobogganing on a nearby slope.

CELEBRATE NEW YEAR SAMI STYLE New Year’s Eve is celebrated with a menu of trout from Lake Inari, King Crab from the Barents Sea and cloudberries from the Inari basin. Celebrations are not constrained by time zones: the New Year comes in early for the Skolt, an hour later for the Inari Sami and an hour after that for the Northern Sami. As the evening wears on there will be fireworks, dancing and fortunes told from the shapes formed by melting tin!

New Years Day

MEET A SAMI REINDEER HERDER Leisurely, late breakfast before a visit to a nearby reindeer corral to meet a herder and his herd, help feed them and listen to Sami tall stories!
STAKE OUT THE NORTHERN LIGHTS In the evening take a valedictory snowmobile out to a special spot by the Lake to stake out the Northern Lights and hopefully enjoy one of nature’s dazzling light shows to end your stay [20km/3 hours].
 

Jan 2

TAKE YOU DREAMS HOME Breakfast and time for a last toboggan before transfer to Ivalo and return flight(s) via Helsinki to Heathrow, departing at 13.20 and arriving at 17.10.