Piston Eye Man

21/2/2014

[Age 17]

We woke up 10 minutes before our first trip – we had to be late at some point in this holiday… Mum slipped in the snow and hurt her head but we managed to still go to the reindeer park as the nice Indian family helped us. We each had our own sleigh and Anna, our guide, gave us a reindeer hide to keep us warm as it was – 26C!!! We got on a sleigh and went on a path for a while. After we got a warm drink in a tepee fire tent, we had a chance to drive our own reindeer! To pull left was to stop however mine did not stop… We drove into the minibus and headed into the rest of the park. Quite funny really… After we got back, we went to the igloos and ‘chilled’ in there, went to our usual café and went for another walk and sauna. After dinner we walked to the pub as Micheal (the man who drove us from the airport) invited us and its only open Friday and Saturday! It was strange, full of mainly men who were old, hunters and very drunk. As soon as we got in there, we had men come up to us. One was a carpenter and the other a miner and the other a reindeer herder who follows his reindeer living with his brother and sister, like Sámi. Many were hunters shooting bears and elks, they carried pistons and knives and one man told us a story of why he only had one eye. He shot himself in the face when his girlfriend dumped him – It felt like we were in the wild west! Interesting night and I got served!

We got away from the men and Mike chatted to us before we got kicked out for the pub at 2am and Mike walked us back to our cabin and threw me in the snow.