Luosto Thursday 22/11/18

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It gets light very late in the arctic so we had a lazy morning in bed and went down to breakfast about 9:30am. Breakfast is buffet style and there is a section of cereals, breads and toasts with jam, some sort of unidentifiably porridge type mush, baby sausages and what looked like scrambled egg but tasted like baked custard… There were also croissants and several cheeses, cured meats, tomato, smoked salmon and cucumber to choose from.

Following breakfast, we collected our clothes (ski jumpsuits and boots) and went back to the igloo to try them on for size. We didn’t think we needed them today so we put our own thermals and clothes on and went for a walk into the village. It is only a few hundred metres down the road and there is another bigger resort, an amethyst shop and a few cafes in the village. There is no snow at the moment so the shops are very quiet and several are shut.

We went into the amethyst shop and booked to do a tour of the amethyst mine that is 10 minutes away. We had about an hour to kill so we wandered around the village and found a café where I had some delicious pea and ham soup.

A minibus took us to the local mine and we had to walk up several sets of stairs to the top of a hill where there were some huts and the entrance to the mine. We were taken into the hut and given a drink of hot berry juices, which was delicious. It was sweet and sour at the same time and was served in plastic cups fitted into carved log cup holders. After the talk, we were given a little pickaxe and then we walked down a wooden staircase to a covered scree slope where we were allowed to do some digging. This mine is a surface one and they do their mining during the summer months. We dug around for about 20 minutes and were allowed to keep a piece that was no bigger than the palm of our hand. We could also purchase other pieces that we found.

After digging around for a while, we walked back up to the shop at the top of the hill for a look at their pieces of amethyst for sale and to pay for our extras. Then we walked back down the stairs to where the minibus collected us to take us back into Luosto.

It was around 2:30pm so we headed back into our igloo for a hot drink and to relax until going down to Reception for a pre-dinner drink.

Dinner tonight was a soft beetroot soup with Smetana (sour cream) and Lappish bread for Shelley and grilled chicken breast with vegetable-cabbage wok and tomato-red pepper sauce for me. After eating, we headed to our igloo to get into our jamies.

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