Safartica Levi — Attraction in Tunturi-Lapin seutukunta

tl;dr: avoid the "northern lights campfire", it's a waste of money, go search the northern lights by yourself with the below mentioned technique.

Don't know about you, but when I'm visiting a new country/area and book a tour I'm expecting actual locals talking to me and showing me around to experience their place of living. At safartica in Levi you get shown around by some french guys that tell you some stuff that you can easily research yourself. Not horrible by itself, but it was very rude that they kept talking in french regularly, just because 3 people on the tour (out of ~15) were french.

Concerning the tour we booked, we were also disappointed. The tour was a "northern lights campfire". Of course no one can expect good weather conditions or the northern lights to appear. Everyone should know this before (!) making their way towards the northern parts of the earth. But for 71€ per person you only get a 10 minute bus drive to the location, some hot berry juice and a finnish sausage, that isn't even evenly grilled and burned on some spots. You sit in a hut (traditional finnish tipi) and get told some facts. The talking consisted of: scientific reason for northern lights different folklore of the northern lights techniques for night photography and especially for northern lights with people

When in northern lappland just avoid this waste of money and search the northern lights by yourself. How? Like this:

1.: Already before booking a trip try to check the kp-Index forecast for the time. It tells you the intensity of particles that travel from the sun to earth and cause the northern lights.

2.: Check if the area you want visit is actually in the central area for the northern lights. This area is a ring around the northern parts of earth. It gets worse both to the north and south! If so, you get the best the chance even for low activity of the sun (low kp-Index). Levi und Tromso are great, both Svalbard and Rovaniemi for example are worse! You can check this via the aurora forecast here at following website: www.gi [dot] alaska [dot] edu/monitors/aurora-forecast

3.: Download the aurora app. It gives notification for high probabilities of northenr lights in regard to your location and also some more firecast for kp-index, weather and so on. play [dot] google [dot] com/store/apps/details?id=com [dot] jrustonapps [dot] myauroraforecast&hl=gsw&gl=US&pli=1

4.: Check the weather for the time you visit, october and march are better than decemer/january. You absolutely need as little clouds as possible, the sky must be clear for a good view. And of course a dark sky so winter is perfect.

5.: Know what you're actually looking for! The northern lights can be only a grey sliver in the sky, if they're weak. The vibrant pictures you see everywhere, are caused by the different sensitivity of digital cameras. Our eyes are not good at seeing colours when it's dark.

6.: put on very warm clothes, get some warm drink in your thermos flask and just walk 1 or 2 kilometres away from the city lights in your area and find a dark spot or small road with as little lights as possible. Get your eyes acustomed to the dark and search the sky for the beautiful northern lights. The campfire from safartica isn't much different in terms of lights pollution.

7.: Don't be lazy! If the sky is clear at 2:00 in the night and the aurora forecast is good, get out there! It'll be worth it. I know for me, it was.

I hope this will...

My partner and I attended the Levi: Snowmobile Safari with Ice Fishing and Outdoor Lunch program on the 8th of March 2025 and it was fantastic! I asked our guide (unfortunately I can't remember his name, but he was from Belgium and he was super cool!) if it would be possible to have 2 separate snowmobile for me and my boyfriend for additional charge and he made it happen. We drove 20 km, then stopped at a frozen lake. While we were ice fishing, he cooked a delicious reindeer soup (there was also vegetarian option). Me and another girl managed to catch a small fish, which was a great success! We could choose if we would like to eat our lunch inside a little hut or outside. We had nice weather, so the group decided to eat outside. We all had a great chat and a lovely lunch and then we headed back to the office on the snowmobile. Very well organized tour and amazing guide, can't...

We booked several excursion with them but at our last one , we were a party of 10 , we missed the appointment spot and they left without us. Nobody tried to call us on our mobile phones. It is not normal to leave without 10 people without even calling them on their mobile phones. We tried to contact them to do something else, another safari or a shorter one the next day, or to get part of our money back since at this point they have charged us without rendering the service. Every time the answer was no , there is nothing we can do. Avoid them as they are not at all to be trusted and flexibility is 0 with them.

Worst experience ever.

P.S : when we asked to speak to a supervisor the call center lady just passed us to another colleague without any power of decision, which we found out later was not a supervisor.

AVOID AT...