The Secret Beach in Komiža

I have been here before, but then the tide and my clothes were not suitable for exploring. Now they were! I also did not understand the naming the beaches I was at, but I do now. The cave I'm looking at is at the Dog Beach, literally the beach that the dogs (and people) can swim at. A bit further out from the Dog Beach there's the Kamenice Beach, also called the Camp Beach due to the nearby low-cost but forbidden accommodation option :-) Both beaches can be accessed easily with chairs, have a bar, etc. However, between them there's the Secret Beach. To get there you have to go through a cave and climb, wall across a part of the sea that is only passable easily during low tide (picture above), or straight out swim.

I have now tried all three options, and the walk option is of course the easiest, swimming is most fun, but the cave and climb is the best adventure :-)

The cave is the cave at the left end (looking out to the sea) of the Dog Beach. It is small, just 1-2 meters to go through a rock outcrop. After this you have to climb. The cave is at coordinates N 43.0390013 E 16.0914765.

I thought there'd a cave in the Secret beach. However, there's nothing other than some depressions in the cliff surfaces.

Anyway, all these beaches are much recommended. The best services are at the Kamenice Beach, dogs seem to like the Dog Beach because they too get drinks from the bar, and the Secret Beach has typically less people :-) 

Dog Beach:

Secret Beach:

Kamenice Beach. You can see the camp in the ridge above the beach. And on the beach itself there are sunshade beds, rentable for 20€ per day. They don't provide full cover from the sun though, and it can be hot:

On the way to these beaches, one has to pass Komiža's streets. Komiža is mostly about historic rock buildings... but there's a couple brutalist concrete buildings as well:

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take recognisable photos of other saunagoers or swimmers. and try to visit at times where there is simply no one else around or the facility has been booked only for me.

Helsinki-Vantaa Arrival Shop - Never a Chance to Shop

What's up with the Helsinki-Vantaa's arrival shop? It does not seem to be open in the evenings or even during the day. The airport is busy, why not have it open? 

I have often bought things here, convenient shopping when you don't have to drag the stuff all the way in the airplanes.

For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Norwegian MAX

After a long period I have once again flown a Norwegian flight. It was significantly cheaper than a Lufthansa option, better timing in this case. And Finnair didn't fly. Quite happy with the experience even if flying on the cheapest possible tickets. Comfortably and safely to the other side of Europe for 160€. Not bad.

I changed at Arlanda, it is a tidy and well-organized airport. Maybe not as modern and flash as Helsinki is perhaps but everything runs smoothly.

I have to say though that having a dinner in Arlanda's restaurants was not relatively speaking as cheap as the flight was. I paid 302 SEK or about 30€ for a small hamburger, fries, and soft drink. And this didn't even include any service, I had to order it on a buggy screen thing, and then fetch the burger and drink separately from different places. 

For more flying stories, check out the planetflier.com website! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Hotel beach

Komiža is the exclusive, still largely authentic fishing village on the Vis island on Croatia's Adriatic Sea coast. There's multiple beaches, and my favorite is the Lucica Beach. But the one near Hotel Bisevo, Gusarica Beach is also nice! It is larger, and more popular. I usually call it the hotel beach.

You can find the beach location from Google via this link.

There's a bar, a church, couple of diving centers, canoe rentals, a port ... and the hotel. All you need, that is. The beach is easy and well protected. As with elsewhere in Vis, the beach is pebbles rather than sand. I prefer to use some kind of shows to not make my feet hurt.

This is the little street, Ribarska Ulica. It is the main shopping street in Komiža:

This is the harbor in front of the hotel beach, photographed in the night:

More pictures from the beautiful alleys of Komiža:

For more information about the Gusarica beach, read this. And for Lucica, read this or this.

For more sauna and swimming stories, check out planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool websites! And of course the Planetcaver, and Planetskier blogs for other stories in Blogspot and TGR! The photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. I never take recognisable photos of other saunagoers or swimmers. and try to visit at times where there is simply no one else around or the facility has been booked only for me.

Abandoned metro station with high voltage barriers

Kymlinge, the ghost station on the Stockholm underground. A station for the planned but never completed suburb near Kista's technology-oriented neighborhood. A station where only the dead are said to exit, and where only the long lost ghost train, the "Silverpilen" travel. A station with underground platforms and additional space underneath.

I had heard about this, but had forgotten all about it until my friend Johan happened to mention it; he had gone running in the area. I had one evening left in the area, a rainy evening, but decided I wanted to check this out. 

The question, as always, was whether one could enter this place. Would be nice to collect another underground location that I have visited. However... the station is unused, but it is not on an unused track. The subway trains to and from the nearby Kista station run through the station every few minutes.

I kept searching for a possible emergence or secondary exit. But I did not find anything on top of the station. At the other end of the station the ground drops away and the trains run on a bridge. Locked metal doors lead under the station, but ... indeed locked. And these doors are anyway far away from the station's passenger platforms, so maybe they wouldn't have led anywhere anyway.

The tracks are blocked by heavy metal fences and barbwire. There was of course a door for the maintenance personnel, with a lock:

It did turn out, however, that the door was unlocked.

This would have offered a way in. However, across the subway tracks with exposed train power line on the side. In a moment of uncharacteristic sanity, I decide to not cross the tracks. I'd rather stay a bit further away from exposed electricity lines. And also I didn't like to have to run to the station platform's darkness before the next trains to arrive, or have the drivers alert if they'd see me in the platform. Lame, I know :-)

So I did not get to visit the station. Maybe some day, perhaps they will have a tour or something...

More information about the Kymlinge station can be found in Wikipedia, Atlas Obscura, Kynerd, Story tours, Stockholm's Hjärtä (recommended!) and Robert Eklund. 

The station's platforms look like this:

Here's the bridge-side metal doors:

I didn't know what these signs were in the forest... MTB routes? Didn't seem so extreme...

Kista is an interesting combination of extremes, by the way. On one hand there's extreme high tech being developed there, with 30+ story skyscrapers dotting the landscape. Then again, there's old farm houses... and forests.

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. 

Sand skiing in Jiehtájohka

On the way back home from the Käsivarsi wilderness area heli-hiking trip, we saw a large sand dune near the Jiehtájohka river as we were driving by. We were about to stop at a restaurant few kilometers away, and fortunately Jarmo and Duncan were game for returning after lunch to check out the dune. And indeed, there was sand, it was steep enough to be skied, and I was able to make a couple of turns on my red mini-skis! Enough to call the month's turns done.

And thanks guys for taking the photos and videos while I skied :-)

But this sudden appearance of a skiable sand dune came after some earlier disappointments. I had my mini skis on the hiking trip. Carried them for tens of kilometers... *Except* of course on the side trip that we unexpectedly found the snow on the north side of a far-away ridge. 

Well, maybe that's just as well. As you can see above, there's a narrow snow patch on a steep ridge. The mini-skis are great for taking them into different places, but they are not the safest skis to make precision turns on treacherous places with sharp boulders to fall onto. 

We also saw snow on the far away mountains while we hiked, and even some snow from the windows of the helicopter, but didn't have time or money to make extra stops.

Finally, we also saw snow in the Olos ski resort (near where we stayed in Särkijärvi). Unfortunately, it was snow stored for the next winter season, covered by thick blankets:

Anyway, despite these disappointments I managed to make my turns in August :-) All hail the sand skiing!

Video:

Jiehtájohka is the Saami name; the Finnish version Hietajoki (sandy river). The dune is in these coordinates: N 68.468224 E 22.423468. There's easy access from the road, and space to park. I'm sure there's plenty of more of the sand in this area, but the area right towards the road seemed to be the one with most open sand.

The Käsivarsi trip was for discovering caves. It is discussed separately here, here, and here. And the previous year's trip's findings were discussed here; I also skied back then, but in the wilderness, see this article.

A picture of Duncan's camera after he had taken photos:

More pictures of the snow we found near a ridge behind Doskalharj:

More pictures from Jiehtájohka:

Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.  The audio has been generated by Google's NotebookLM in podcast mode.

The search for Toskaljärvi area caves: peek into every hole

In August 2024 we explored the surroundings of the Toskaljärvi lake and Doskalharj mountain. Our mission was to find caves, perhaps a desperate mission in this landscape that is mostly marked by small, broken up rock... but there are areas of limestone, larger boulder fields, canyons and cliffs all of which we wanted to check out. The mission turned then into a "walk everywhere and peek into every hole you can see". Of course, most of those holes were rather small in closer inspection.

TBD ...

Read more urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot or TGR. Photos and text (c) 2024 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.