For The Love of Travel

Philpots Island lies to the east of Devon Island, in Baffin Bay and is home to Northern Fulmars, Glaucous Gulls and Ivory Gulls. These birds are opportunistic scavengers often found on seal corpses. They have been known to follow polar bears and other predators to feed on the remains of their kill.           We zodiac’d to another glacier this morning, negotiating our way through black ice in the water. Gorgeous light made for some lovely photos. Some walrus were spotted sunning on rocks by the spit…so we went across the bay to see the colony. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before lunch, the ‘polar plunge’…crazy passengers leaping into arctic waters just for fun….the doc was on hand with the defib!!

Some nasty history re the Island. The Canadian govt ‘removed’ some Inuit from another area and forced them to live on Ellesmere, as part of a ‘staking a land claim strategy’ vis a vis Norway. The Inuit were totally unprepared for the tough conditions and died within 2 years…..

A walk ashore off Grise Fjord today….we saw a little lemming….they are hardy !! animals living below the ice for months on end before they surface in the summer melt. 0 degrees with wind chill! Very barren terrain with lots of rocks to clamber over, testing one’s balance and giving the legs, particularly knees, a good work out. 

We passed the Willcox glacier on our way to Philpots Island.

‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ our entertainment tonight.

 

Up at 4.30am this morning and can’t get back to sleep. Go down to the Internet cafe and process some photos for the blog, anticipating the posts when I get to Edmonton….woo hoo!

We go ashore for a walk and it’s good to stretch the legs for 5-6 kms……more Thule hut remains to be seen, and a brown bear paw print in the estuary sand! The next best thing to seeing the bear itself. 

Deb feels good and is doing a ‘ I feel on top of the world’ pose. The other photo is of her, her husband Jim and Jean – the 3 of them have been mates from previous Lindbland voyages. We all get on very well together.

Ray, the ‘Icemaster’ was at our dinner table tonight and had lots of interesting stories to tell about Ellesmere Island (towards which we are headed) and the history of the Hudson Bay Co…..and about himself and brothers in the ship navigation game. Fascinating!