The Travelling Howes: Blog 4-The first barbie of the year.......

Today saw us off on the snow mobiles again, this time for a day travelling across Lake Inari to visit the wilderness church. there's a clue in the name of the church..... Temperatures again in the -mid 20s but the sun was shining and we whisked along at a cracking pace, maybe cracking not the right word when travelling over 2metre thick ice perhaps? All fine until you hit a slushy bit which makes you very nervous as it reminds you that there is a lot of water beneath your skis. We stopped couple of times to take amazing photos of just bleak, white but incredibly beautiful nothingness. The aforementioned barbie was the lunch stop. I can tell you that trying to go to the loo with a) all this kit on top of at least4 layers underneath is an experience b) trying to undo buttons, zips, flaps etc with frozen fingertips is almost impossible and c) when you finally manage to do all of the aforementioned, people outside the shed with the frozen compost toilet are wailing for you to hurry up as they are equally desperate!!!!! Our guide was very happy as today was the first time he had seen sun since November and then regaled us with tales of a wedding he went to a couple of weeks ago out on this bleak lake. And yes, the bride worn a white version of what we had on..... Even my eyelashes had frost on them, most bizarre sensation but we are loving it all here. It is so pristine and clean and the silence is deafening. Now writing this whilst waiting for the sauna in our room to heat up enough to defrost us, then off for more food -they feed us vast quantities to keep us warm. Tonight we are off on another hunt for those pesky Lights, this time on snow shoes so it won't be too far hopefully.
We are here alone but on trips out we get together with 4 other couples and share a guide. The others all leave tomorrow and my feeling is that they are not going to see the Lights as it looks pretty cloudy tonight which must be disappointing for them. We have 2 more nights from tomorrow but am not expecting to see them either, so if we do, it will be a massive bonus.
Somehow it doesn't really matter too much as we are having such a good time anyway, it would just be the icing on the cake (so to speak).