Kustavi and it's surroundings

I attended Helsinki Ashtanga yoga school's summer retreat in Kustavi last week. I'm not going to go deeper to the yoga part here, but rather share my experience of Kustavi and its surroundings.

When I booked the retreat I decided to stay in a tent. Last summer I realized that I sleep rather well in a tent so I figured that it would make the retreat experience even better. My daily schedules were built around what the retreat had to offer and I was kept quite busy with it all, but I figured out a way to steal an hour or two everyday for a little adventure outside the campsite.

And there was quite a few things to see and experience in Kustavi.

The campsite was located in a pretty remote spot on the island, 7 kilometers from the the center. I was in the retreat with my car, so it was easy for me to move around the area. Staying in the tent also provided me with a freedom to crawl back in at any hour of the night without disturbing anyone (compared to a shared room/cottage).

My day trips included a visit in Lootsi, looking at the shipwreck that's on the land (I have no idea how they managed to get it there), a visit to the local handcraft village and Taivassalo (a near by village).

One night a friend of mine, Tuomo, drove to Kustavi to spend the evening with me. We had good time. We started the evening with a long, relaxed dinner at Lootsi and we left only when they needed us to leave the premises at closing time.

After that we went exploring the near by caves. It was raining a little on and off, but it didn't bother us. I got to try out my new raincoat and I was happy to find out that it works perfectly. We climbed the slippery rocks with extra attention, we walked and talked. We watched the sunset at the top of the hill, climbed down, walked around the caves and eventually reached the sea level, stopping again to watch the never ending sunset. My sneakers got wet, but even that didn't slow us down. We got lost in the woods and found our way again.

After we had explored the caves we went to have a look the ferry to Åland. I got some amazing pictures of it. I haven't been to the archipelago too much in the past years, so it was all more or less new for me. We were looking at the sunset on the other direction and the rainbow in the other. The pictures I took were pretty funny to look at afterwards since I obviously couldn't decide what to shoot: "ferry, rainbow, ferry, rainbow, ferry, rainbow, rainbow, ferry, rainbow... Oh look! If I take a panorama I can fit both in the same picture! ferry, rainbow, ferry, ferry, rainbow..." You can imagine...

We finished the evening with a walk around the wooden church in Kustavi and then went our separate ways. Tuomo drove home and I continued back to the campsite. I made one more stop in the middle of the empty road to take one more picture of the sunset. The scenery was so amazing I just couldn't pass it without stopping there.

The campsite was very silent when I got there. I was the only one still up and even though I lost an hour or two of sleep because of the adventure, it was well worth it.

Of course there's still a few things I didn't explore, but that just leaves me with something new for next year.

The Finnish summer is beautiful.

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