For The Love of Travel

It’s colder today, 0 degree C. I’ve purchased a ‘buff’ on board ship, to shield the face from the bitter winds.
Another walk ashore….along raised beaches, the result of rebound of the land after ice sheets melted about 100,000 years ago. We saw the best example of a Thule site located on a beach terrace, which once would have been the shoreline of a shallow cove in the Bay. There were 10 Bowhead whale skulls used as construction in the walls of a Thule house. There are some existing brave flowers and lichen (Red Elegant Sunburst) and yellow moss (nmium species)… that brave this bleak, harsh and overall barren landscape….and muskox (we saw hoof prints)….what a desolate spot.

Beluga whales were also sighted today…the whites of their back arch just above the waterline giving you the impression that there’s a small lapping wave breaking, but no, it’s the whale.

Kim Campbell, ex Prime Minister of Canada is aboard the ship as a ‘Global Perspectives’ speaker and I, together with 6 others, had the honour of being invited to her table for dinner in the Chart Room.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, 2 killer whales on the starboard side @ 1.30” was Lisa’s greeting this morning at 7am (the expedition leader).

Have I mentioned Lisa before….she is equally at home wearing Manolo Blahniks at night and during the day, finding a vantage point to survey the landscape when we are ashore/packing a rifle to protect us from hungry beasts! Awesome!

It’s cold today, 1 degree C and now it’s started to snow. But we are going ashore and have a walk through spongy tundra and down rock/scree to some Thule remains and Royal Canadian Mounted Police huts about 6 kms. This is polar bear country potentially up close and personal, so we have been warned to stay in our groups and not venture off on our own. Staff have flares to scare off any bears that surprise us and only if necessary, guns. Saw summer and winter scrat from muskox, different lichen and some wild flowers. Also saw an Inukshuk with 3 rocks piled on each other….this means ‘you can get fish in the lake’; 5 piled rocks is a signpost that you have made this point, for others that are following; the top rock points to where you are headed.

Janice and Frits are a lovely couple from Calgary, with whom I have had lots of fun….they both have a dry sense of humour, are left leaning and critically appraise the lectures we receive, with finely tuned antennae for bull…t!

We were welcomed back on board by Henrik with hot choc laced with whiskey….that was a nice surprise and warmed us up immediately. They do look after us well!

 

“Nanook of the North” a silent/black and white movie classic is showing tonight. What a sad movie….Nanook dies a year after the film was made, out of starvation!

“The North is the only place where nature can still claim to rule, the only place as yet but little vexed by man. All over the globe there spread his noisy failures; the North alone is silent and at peace”. (Stephen Leacock 1937)
Today we have been looking out for narwhal, the whale with the large straight tusk from a protruding canine tooth that lives for about 50 years. It feeds on flatfish in winter and cod, halibut in summer. Each year migrating from bays into the ocean as summer comes. Saw some snow geese instead….and a mother polar bear with two cubs.

Too windy to launch the zodiacs this afternoon. Lots of time for reading as we floated past large craggy mountains with glaciers spilling out.

“Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn is entertaining me! “He turned our family life into an endless road trip with bad directions and a rage clenched driver, a vacation that never got a chance to be fun. (Don’t make me turn this car around)…Please, really, turn it around”.

Tonight, Jonathan’s (surprise) birthday party that his wife has organised and I have been invited… nice!