I'm making an exception and sharing my last vacation excitement in a bit more understandable encoding than is Estonian. Tons of overseas friends always ask what there is to see in this part of the world and contrary to the Amazing Race episode itinerary (sauna on wheels and Tallinn old town), there are places that will never end up on the cover of Lonely Planet yet are so visit-worthy. So here you go.

Ruhnu is a small island 70km off the coast of Pärnu or Saaremaa. More Estonians end up visiting Paris than this tiny piece of land. The number of brave sapiens daring to spend the winters there and generally live in tribal solitude year-long is somewhere between 50 and 60. The number usually decreases during the weekends when the excitement of hosting visiting female choirs causes excess drinking and a few broken bones that need fixing on the Estonian border guard speed boat on its way to a closest hospital.

Ruhnu is lovely. You look at the pics and start planning the weekend. You book a bed and are even willing to camp under the stars. Those who know, warn about the mozzies. But what the heck, it's nothing compared to experienced earthquakes, being lost in the Indian flatlands and surviving altitude, dehydration and what not.

Then you really start planning. For how to actually get there. After all, it's only 70km across the bay. A few months back I ran a distance longer than that. However, the semi-regular ferry can be sold out. The speed boat leaving form Southern Latvia can be out of business (recession, remember). Yachts for rent still cost a ton and take half a lifetime to sail, a lifetime when there isn't even a breeze. There is an airplane. I'm not attaching the photo of it as there's a perfect reason for that, trust me. Plus, in the most optimistic case (no luggage, very little beer, a couple of king-size people tops) it takes only 8 passengers including the pilot. That leaves you with a small speed boat. Speed is relative, but 30km/h compared to all other options is fast. It really is. Especially in retrospect.

It took us a couple of hours to drive to Kuressaare, an extra hour to eat all the amazing smoked fish before boarding and off we went. Now a small tip: want to learn the most intimate physiological aspects of your friends? Ask the captain to stop the boat, let it float side-wave and have a peeing break for the men. It's amazing how the otherwise windless and waveless weather can turn into something that makes half of the people's stomachs turn and the women scream. It's evilly entertaining to watch if you have none of the issues :)

The target itself is 5.5x3.5km so you can easily circumnavigate the island in one day. Half of the shoreline is accessible for the ones most interested in closer contact with bulrushes. There are one and a half roads. One official shop/post office and one semi-legal souvenir counter. We found one bus stop. The sign was probably recycled from mainland as the line no 5 has the same stop called "Metsakooli" in Tallinn. We met the teacher, so the kids should be ok. But we were wondering about the police. After all, there is a huge neighbouring Latvian population visiting the island each summer!

On somewhat more serious note: the oldest wooden church in Estonia is just off the main road and is one of the most amazing spiritual buildings I've seen. There's nothing grand or flashy, it gets extremely warm inside and the priest is almost older than the church itself. But oh is it lovely.

The second secret recommendation is the beaches. I'm not telling my favourite. But they all have their wild style and the sunsets are so worth going for it. Having a hammock or a cuba libre did not cross my mind, it was that cool (and I've been to some cool beaches in the world!).

Food is great, the few locals we met shyly friendly. The sauna is proper one and if you're lucky, the nights can turn into something very Treasure Island'ish when the thunder hits the coast and you get to sleep under a roof about to explode because of the rain pressure. All very cool.

Now, if you've managed to read this so far, you obviously are an experienced globetrotter and know that as in all other secluded places, everything is relative. Shops are open when they are. Left can be right and right can be left. Things happen if the weather allows. And that's the coolest thing about going to such places. If, on your free time you're a white-collar irreplaceable important person, do not schedule any board meetings for the next morning you're supposed to be back from your rendezvous. Because, getting back from the island can happen as planned, and can not. I would have actually preferred to get stranded there for a few more days. It's a nice feeling to soak in the sea and think about nothing.

We weren't so lucky this time. The weather was perfect by average European Commission standards, so a few sandwiches later we jumped on the boat again and the perspective was to be in front of the living room telly only a few hours later.

When there's no wind and the waves are less than a metre high it takes about 2-3 hours by boat to hit Saaremaa. Add another hour to drive to the harbour to take the ferry to the actual mainland of Estonia. And in another hour you should be back at home. Theoretically. Optimistically. If you have no karmic debt.

Obviously our small wanderers' club owns to Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Ganesh, Elvis, Walt Disney and Konstantin Päts (the first President of Estonia), because the queue to get your car on the ferry was long. Few-km-type-of-long.
Here is a list of what you can do during the long wait and drive:

eat a few burgers and icecreams at the harbour pub
buy all the icecreams and cold soda to resell it to the lazy drivers lined up. Margin can be anything between 10 and 100 percent.
discuss the meaning of life.
sketch a drawing of the new bridge between the island and the mainland, make a few hundred copies, prepare a smooth semi-technical speech of how the bridge has been opened for a few weeks already and that no one simply knows that you have to take a different turn to drive there. Be convincing, optimistic, emphatic and point at the big bridge-project poster already installed next to the ticket counter. Depending on your skill, 30 to 89 percent of the cars in front of you will make a U turn from the queue to the direction of the newly opened bridge, allowing you to move forward.
quote and analyse a book titled "Man Magnet"
kill some mozzies
analyse the latest fashion trends of not-quite-adults-yet
do stretching
memorize the Road Atlas of 2008

Here is a list of things you could have done instead of the 12 hour journey back to Tallinn:

Flown from Tallinn to NY. You could almost have squeezed in a return flight.
Read through at least two 1000pages long books
Cycled the whole distance back and forth
Emptied your hopelessly full inbox and rss feed and would have had time to actually click through most of the 10000+ items.
Memorized the Road Atlas AND a half of Oxford Spanish dictionary.
Acutally ended up finding out the meaning of life.

I'm not saying this is the standard return journey and that you'd have to unconditionally love your friends to survive an experience like that. Not at all. It's just the example of the unpredictability part and I did warn you that getting stranded in Ruhnu is not a bad deal at all ;)