Archipelago

We made it from Helsinki to Nagu (Pargas) which is in Southwestern Finland. According to Wikipedia: “The Nagu archipelago is part of the world’s largest brackish water archipelago with 100 000 islands, islets and skerries in Sweden, Finland and Estonia”. We spent two days exploring the local area and taking full advantage of the free ferry service provided by FinnFerry.

It was overcast and we had some light rain at times. We did see a fair amount of wildlife including two species of deer (whitetail deer and roe deer), foxes, hares, and a number of different bird species including swallows, lapwings, and lots of noisy cranes. Still no luck seeing moose. Each morning we could hear cuckoos off in the distance but we were unable to find them. It was nice being able to take several hikes each day, enjoy the scenery, and relax a bit.

We wrapped up the second day by heading up to Narpes where we will explore the Finnish coastline some more. Our Finnish friends should be excited since their National hockey team beat the US team today (4-3) to advance to the gold medal game in the international ice hockey tournament. The US team plays for bronze.