Mountain Climbing: El Camino del Rey (Malaga, Spain)

by Mikko on May 28, 2010:

My plans to head off for mountain climbing in Spain are moving ahead. The schedule has been set to this winter and the intention is to reach El Camino Del Rey near Malaga by the end of February.

You can read more about the schedule and participate in sponsorship by clicking here.

Autumn holiday in Italy

by Mikko on October 7, 2009:

We spent the holidays in the beautiful scenery of Italian countryside, travelling from Milan to Genova to Firenze and all the way back.

Thanks to Hertz car rental, we had a great journey driving across the countryside. We visited the small group of villages called Cinque Terre, which used to be a beautiful, sleepy set of little towns connected only via railway. Needless to say, once the mass tourism found out about these once beautiful villages, they overturned a century of history and made it into a amusement park for tourists.

Beautiful Genova is always worth a visit, since it used to be the capital of mediterranean sea and the main hub of all shipping cargo to and from the area. We stayed in Genova for five days and stayed in the very same hotel where I have been every single time in the past years visiting Italy. If you head off to Italy and pay a visit to the beautiful port town of Genova, I recommend for you as well the Hotel Bellevue.

Oh and just one of the many, many reasons for anyone to pay a visit to Genova: there are virtually no tourists in this busy seaside city of 600 000 or so citizen. Also worth mentioning is that Christopher Columbus was born in Genova, and among many other things to see, his birth place, the actual house still stands there.

Pictures from the second trip to North Cape

by Mikko on September 9, 2009:

The pictures will be available promptly... So please stay tuned.

North Cape Cabins & fishing

by Mikko on September 4, 2009:

With a full day in hand to do what ever we'd like to, we decided to spend part of it by fishing. Since we rented a small (but cosy!) cabin for ourselves from Northcapecabins.no, we didn't have to go far to get fish: the cabin was on top of a pier with great access to the sea.

The best part of the fishing experience was the amount of fish. I had a fishing rod with reel and it was pretty much every second throw you caught a fish. How nice is that, eh? For once you didn't have to spend the whole day trying to get a catch, instead you actually got lots of them. Maybe too much, because we had to stop fishing after a while with nowhere to put all the fish we caught.

For the rest of the day we decided to make the best of it by cooking our catch and exploring the nearby mountain. We even had some visitors from the mountain, when a group of reindeers came by.

In the evening we decided to put some outdoor candles on the pier using flat top rocks as a plate for each candle. Oh, if you happend to like completely flat rocks, there are quite a plenty of them in North Cape. Mainly all of the stone on the island is completely flat and it works as a great surface in your home as well to use as a candle plate.

This trip was the best one yet, being the third time in Norway in total. I got lots of great inspiration to use when creating my next project, and it was also a great relaxing holiday after a busy summer at work.

Reaching our destination

by Mikko on September 3, 2009:

After a full day of driving, from 9 am till 10 pm we reached Alta, Norway on wednesday, 2nd of September. With only a "short" three hours drive left, we headed towards Mageroya island, where North Cape is located. Weather was nice with completely blue skies and the views were stunning as always.

At around half past 1pm, we were in front of the longest tunnel that connects mainland to Mageroya island, waiting for a lead car to take our convoy through the tunnel. Normally you can just drive through the tunnel, but today there was some roadworks going on inside the tunnel so every vehicle had to follow a lead car to go through.

We had scheduled a meeting with our rental cabin owner at 2pm, and we parked in front of the cabins near Honningsvag exactly 2pm. What a delight to be on-time.

After a quick look of the cabins, we continued for the remaining 30km towards North Cape and Nordkapp Center. Nordkapp Center is now open for only part of the day, closing as early as 3pm so we were lucky to get in due to some group of Austrian tourists that had scheduled a late arrival.

Autumn in North Cape - Destination Nordkapp

by Mikko on September 1, 2009:

For the third time this year we have decided to head over to North Cape in Norway. This journey should be filled with tons of colour: during a few weeks in the autumn season, one or many colors that range from red to yellow fill the foliage and create a beautiful scenery. Our cameras are locked and loaded, ready to shoot some beautiful shots I hope.

North Cape Pictures

by Mikko on June 4, 2009:

Check out the pictures from North Cape, Nordkapp.

Nordkapp at night

by Mikko on June 2, 2009:

People come to Nordkapp for many different reasons. Ours was simply to reach the top of the world, or actually the last frontier of Europe. Since that goal has been reached and we have visited the northernmost point of Europe, now all that's left to do is to reach the southernmost point of Europe: Gibraltar. It's only a 5 000 km drive down south, so it should be relatively easy destination to reach!

At Nordkapp Center we finally had the possibility to use the laptop computers with external electric source, though there is no internet connections at Nordkapp. If you have a cell phone, you can use roaming data via mobile link, but that costs alot.

During night hours people arrive with busses from all over the world, well atleast from all three countries nearby, including but not limited to Finland, Sweden and Norway, ofcourse. At Nordkapp, the midnight sun can be seen from 14th of May to the 31th of July.

Many motorists, bikers and hikers arrive to North Cape as well, since it is the starting point to several different routes for crossing Europe. The EuroVelo bicycle route North Cape and heads to Sagres, Portugal - a 8 196 km distance by land and sea. Motorcyclists head off to Gibraltar with a 5 647 km distance by land and bridge connections.

Destination Nordkapp, arrival

by Mikko on June 1, 2009:

What an interesting drive through steep cliffs and deep mountain tunnels, through probably the most rural parts of Norway. Sometimes we had to come to a complete stop when there were herds of reindeers blocking the road. They seem to be a bit stupid in reactionwise, since they do absolute nothing when a car is heading towards using it's bull horn to warn the animals.

Once we had passed several tunnels, longest being more than 6800 meters (6,8km) with a 4km downhill and 2 coming back to the sea level, there was a toll booth. You have to pay around 280 kronors depending on what kind of vehicle you have, for using the tunnel. And you have to pay it when you return as well. After that you pass a couple of small villages, drive uphill for few kilometers with beatiful, mindblowing scenery all around you. Once you actually reach Nordkapp island and see the Nordkapp Center, there is another toll booth that charges a fee for the vehicle for around 200 kronors plus 50 kronors for each person.

Unlike some people have claimed, there is no electricity available for camper van, and the restaurant is open only during day hours with limited variety of food that's very expensive. But who cares about the price, if you're willing to do the drive here. Nordkapp Center itself is open 24 hours a day with some small displays covering its history and providing toilet facilities.

Enroute to Norkapp, Norway

by Mikko on May 31, 2009:

For the second time this year, I'm heading off to Nordkapp (North Cape), Norway. It's 307 meters high, steep cliff that is often referred to as the northernmost point of Europe. Also it's only 2102 km from the North Pole, so who knows, we might just drop by at Santa's workshop. Though everyone knows that the Real Santa Claus lives in Arctic Circle, in the city of Rovaniemi, Finland.

I will be updating this blog regularly while travelling, so as usual we're well connected to the Internet even when travelling to the last point of civilization.

These voices insist photography and journalism

by Mikko on May 21, 2009:

It took a long time but finally I renewed Picture.fi website. With the new layout and content, I hope to be able to interact more closely with the viewer as well as receive more feedback on our photographic journeys and projects.

Share your thoughts on photojournalism

by Mikko on May 21, 2009:

I would like to hear from the people who actually do it as their livelihood, what's your view on photojournalism? Why do you do it, how did you get involved with the line of work and where you work at?

It would be nice to hear about your assignments and views on working for example, abroad in a foreign country.