Reindeer games

No, we did not visit Santa, but we did take a one-and-a-half hour boat ride across the lake (the largest lake in the country by volume, it holds about 70% of the country's fresh water)

to visit a nomadic reindeer-herding family who traditionally lives in a tipi almost identical to that of the Native Americans of our Great Plains!  

This time the milk tea that welcomed us was made with reindeer milk.  

The reindeer eat lichen, and there are only about 50 families (~500 people) who still herd reindeer.  To support this vanishing culture, the government now financially subsidizes each adult and child who continues to live this particular nomadic lifestyle.  As we talked with the family, it developed that they had only relocated to this particular "summer spot" for tourism reasons, and they had only brought three reindeer because the climate is too warm in the summer at our elevation of 5000 feet and all wrong for the reindeer which typically live at 9000 feet.  

The mother reindeer was panting in the heat, and the area was thick with flies, covering the poor reindeer.  I don't like to see animals suffering outside their natural habitat, but it is fascinating how similar this group of people is to some of our Native Americans.