For The Love of Travel

Resolute is a small hamlet (230 pop) on Cornwallis Island, situated at the northern end of the N W passage. Very icy and blustery weather this morning.
Everything works like clockwork this morning to get us off the ship via zodiacs 

 

…..the hotel ATCO South Camp Inn was ready for us with a vast array of sandwiches and tiny desserts for lunch. 

 

A couple of really old buses took us to the airport and we waited for the 2 charter flights. We looked out with trepidation (and Canadian resignation) at the increasingly foggy runway and heard the first plane and then the second fly over ….we later heard that they couldn’t land and had to go onto Cambridge Bay to refuel. This was when we learnt that the airport is replacing its Instrument Landing System, which will be ready on 5/9. So pilots can only use VFR (visual flight rules) and need to see the horizon for landing…..we could be stuck here for a while unless Lindblad comes up with another plan.
Returned to ship for the night.

Our intrepid expedition leader  told us that Lindblad has chartered 2 planes on 22/8 to fly us to Edmonton. They are also working on back up plan if  weather continues to be poxy.  Stay tuned…….

Just as breakfast began this morning we started to enter the ice between Devon and Cornwallis Islands….we have been spotting for wildlife on and between the floes….just a couple of polar bears today, way in the distance. No ship docking facilities at Resolute so we’ll get ashore tomorrow by zodiacs, people and luggage! The National Geographic photographers have asked for 5 photos from each gue st so that they can compile a folder of the voyage….what a great idea.

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!!