For The Love of Travel

My favorite places, photos and stories

August 21, 2014
by Lids
Comments Off on 11/8 Dundas Island, Devon Island

11/8 Dundas Island, Devon Island

“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.

DSC00864 DSC00871 DSC00865

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!

August 21, 2014
by Lids
Comments Off on 10/8 Buchan Gulf, Baffin Island

10/8 Buchan Gulf, Baffin Island

“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.

DSC00831 DSC00832 DSC00844

“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!

August 21, 2014
by Lids
Comments Off on 9/8 Pond Inlet

9/8 Pond Inlet

Pond Inlet, Nunavut is a hamlet of about 1,500 Inuit at the top of Baffin Island. The town’s economy is largely service based with government being the largest employer.

DSC00803 DSC00815 DSC00819

After being cleared by Customs to land in Canada, we took zodiacs to the shore to visit the Tununiq-miut theatre group for a performance of throat singing and demonstration of Inuit games.

Gorgeous 10 degrees, with sunshine and fabulous cloud formations!!

Tonight, passenger Elaine Bernstein ( accompanied by Naomi Lehman) performed ” Songs at Sea”, a classical vocal recital. Gabriel Faure, Ambroise Thomas and F. Paolo Tosti were my faves in the program.