Ruunaankoski, Finland

Ruunaankoski is near Koli, just about 90 km via road by rounding big lake of Pielinen. Koli is presenting as pure Finnish landscape you can found and Koli is located in county of Karjala. Ruunaankoski is although interesting place, where you can paddle down about rapids, classified from 1-4 depending on time and amount of water. I selected my way to go all these 6 main rapids via rubber boat. With my rubberboat there was family Müller from Sweden also participating. Parents speaked pretty good Finnish also, but the rest of the family was speaking only Swedish.... well, that doesnt matter, because then I can practise my swedish as well in the safe environment.

Ruunaankoski was pretty interesting in that sense, that I was able to compare my early experiences with going to rapids with canoe and see how different it is with rubber boat. At the same time I was practising to speak Swedish as well as discussing with Pekka (the guide, who is in the picture). At the same time there was also other rubber boat, which was celebrating bachelor's party. In the first rapid, they really tried to throw the groom out of the boat, but one friend and the best man was the saldo of that.... next rapid they did agreement, that without bruses and broken nose, the groom was "voluentarily" willing to drop to rapids, he did it and we all had fun.

Aftarwards I got some kind of certificate from there, but dont know where I put that. Interesting. Well... that was probably one of the best parts in my whole trip...at least most of the memories was stored and Pekka's stories were pretty funny abot diving boat motors from the rapids... every dive they found one, but after 6th dive, they found their own :-)