A day as a safari guide can be quite a lot different than a day as a bus guide or town walk guide or museum guide. Why are safari guides usually old men?
Normal day working in Lapland starts at 7.30am from the office where I have taken a good half an hour to drive to. We start with briefing for the up coming day by going through the program and time table. Especially if there are many people working for one product it is essential that everyone knows what they are doing, why and for who.
Team will separate so that the other half will fill up the snowmobiles with gasoline, check lights and sparkle plugs and drive the needed amount of vehicles separate, open the locks and start them. If it is minus thirty degrees cold, this may take several hours!
If it is a whole day safari we prepare food and other gadgets to take with us, pack ice fishing equipment and drinks, extra helmets, gloves and balaclavas, first aid, maps, ropes and tools for fixing the snowmobiles.
One needs to pick up the customers, brief them and be aware of any problems they might have faced in the hotel, local pubs and restaurants during the previous night. Some might need to change gear, one forgot the camera and one is always drunk so we need one more person to drive instead or remove one snowmobile from the pack.
Once we get everyone on top of snowmobile, it is usually 10am and I feel like lunch time already. Already there is one snowmobile lost in the forest and need to be digged up, one far, far, behind the rest of the group and a child is crying of coldness and need to be picked up by taxi. One snowmobile is left on the ice of the river. Then there are the ones complaining we are not driving fast enough and we have to split the group into two and hope everyone will make it in one piece, no snowmobile will get broken and we guides can read each others mind to meet up in the same place again.
We are finally at the ice fishing place but nobody catches wish and one will ask for refund for the trip as he expected to have fresh fish for lunch. We will prepare fire of cold and wet wood, my hands are frozen and numb and the fire still won’t take off. The sausages we took with us, have frozen in back bag and will burn outside and stay frozen inside. Coffee is too strong and we have no milk with us. The group is too lazy to walk all the way to the toilet cubicle made of wood and in the end they all do their needs near by the spring we fetch our water from, meaning that next group coming to this fire place will have to carry water from the city in their back bags.
As we start driving again, everyone is cold and do not concentrate on driving: one is stuck on a slippery part and the next one hits it causing the lights to break down from both snowmobiles. It will be pitch black in less than an hour and we can not let customers to drive without lights. I will be the one to drive without lights for the rest of the journey.
The husky dogs have had a long day and it is late afternoon already. The young dogs have been taken to run as we are the last group of customers. Other dogs are eating and the ones still working don’t want to work. The dogs are fighting and escaping the route or being extremely slow. The last sledge suddenly curves of the route into the forest and back towards the farm, towards the high way, as driver does not realize to stop the sledge and I need to reach it with a snowmobile before it’s too late. The dogs create a big knot of their team walking in every direction and the braces are mixed so that the dogs can’t move without strangling each others. Fighting to get the big dogs back in line and straighten the braces in the light of my head torch, the tourists step of the sleigh to take photos, leaving it unattended and the dogs escape again to a big knot. I feel like crying.
Everyone is tired on the way back and yet another snowmobile drive off the track into deep snow. We are sweating as we try to lift it, push it and tow it out of the embankment. After sweating, it gets freezing cold on the ice of the river where we can finally speed up a bit to make it back to the city in time. My helmet is frosty with ice, I have no headlights and I am balancing between the light coming from snowmobile behind me and the rear light of the one in front of me. How embarrassing would it be if a guide would drive off the track?
When we finally make it to the city, the snowmobiles will need to be maintained, locked and driven in the rows. The group will leave the gear at the office and one of us will take them back to the hotel. At the hotel one says he doesn’t want to drive that slowly tomorrow, another one says he doesn’t want to drive anymore and asks for refund. One says the trip was great and wants to do more. There is also somebody who requests a vegetarian meal for tomorrow.
Back at the office we have to separate and put to dry 30 pairs of wet and dirty helmets, overalls and balaclavas. 60 pairs of different sizes gloves and shoes lay mixed up on the floor. The dishes will need to be washed, back bags unpacked and our own gear put up to dry. Suppliers and the next day’s guides, sales and operations will need to be informed about the changes, and report need to be done and signed for the broken head and rear lights, the several “almost accident” cases and off route drives and by the time I leave the office, it is nine in the evening.
I feel like a corpse and I love my job.

Lotta Lonka
International Hospitality Management student from Lapland, Finland
Travel Guide
Working for Elegant English Hotels in London