80 degrees north. Just 10 degrees shy of the North Pole. This is a quest in the late 1800's and early 1900's that explorers like Roald Amundsen (1st to reach South Pole, 1st to fly over North Pole) took months of preparation, in fact years, and yet here we were aboard the M/S Expedition GAP Arctic Circle tour when it was announced that we were going to reach this great latitude. I immediately thought of my globe at home and how if I were looking at it, I would actually have to tilt it to see where I was headed. It's those little things that are exciting traveling.
To back track a little, I had plans to go to Norway to do a sort of fellowship at a Rehabilitation Center in Oslo. I actually had a discount on any tour from a tour that was previously cancelled so I looked around and found this one, which happened to be 50% off. With my extra 20% off, it was an unbeatable deal. What it entailed was a 14-day Expedition starting from Longyearben, Spitsbergen (which I had to look up where it was, by the way. It's an island north of Norway and part of Norway), and toured all along East Greenland and finally disembarked at Reykjavik, Iceland.
How cool is that? Needless to say, I have never been on a cruise before and I really didn't know what to expect. I actually expected a little boat that I would sleep in a little cabin that was approximately 2m by 2m and eating canned beans. Ok, exaggerating a little bit, but I have to say I was VERY pleasantly surprised and impressed by not only the ship but all the amenities that were on board.
Below is the best place of the ship, we called it "the room with a view"
And the food, the food! This was probably the only thing that was somewhat similar to an actual cruise. Here is an example of a menu and a dish:
Being that I really didn't know what to expect, as saw from my comments above, I can now say that this really was a trip of a lifetime. When I look at pictures, which do not amount to 1/billionth of justice, I almost feel as if the whole experience was a dream. I've never ever EVER seen such beauty in my life. I do love nature, but the vastness of the fjords, ice burgs, glaciers, mountains and cool rocks that I saw are just out of this world.
Yes, I do admit that when I heard about the possible wildlife we may see, polar bears, walruses, seals, whales etc, I did anxiously expect these things. Although we saw most things we wanted to see, never mind the polar bear that was pretty much a white spec on the horizon, I still saw it! This is the spec, seriously, the white thing in the middle:
and this is a picture I took of a zoomed in picture of the polar bear we saw from afar, ha ha:
The desire for wildlife quickly melted into an astonishment of the surreal landscapes and nature we saw. Later, when we actually were close to musk ox,
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whales (below is a humpback whale):
and dolphins, yes, it was exciting, but I was still memorized by the landscape around us as well as the fresh air.
Ahh... the fresh air, that is something I will never forget. And the starry skies with the added bonus of..... AURORA BOREALIS! Again, NOT something I was expecting until there was wind we may see it. The 1st night I saw streaks of white, and thought,"eh.... this is what the excitement is about?" Whatever. It came and then vanished. I went to bed unimpressed. The 2nd night after I missed a 2am wake-up call to see it and later heard people gushing how cool it was I vowed to stay up "late: (which for me seemed to be around 10:30-11ish) and see it. Luckyfor my beauty sleep (ha ha), it came around 10:30 ish. What we witnessed is really a lifetime experience and can't even be described. The Northern Lights is truly something amazing and that one person has to see in person. It took up the whole sky and was swooshing and swiveling and we didn't even know where to look! "Over there!" and we would all rush to one side of the boat. Then, "look! It's over there" and then we would rush to the other side." Granted, this is fairly typical of being on the boat and still makes me laugh. But anyway, the Aurora went up in vertical streaks, in squiggly parts, and had hints of purple/pink on top of the typical green, just AMAZING! We were beside ourselves with excitement and I can visually see it my head like I am just now looking at it. I knew my dinky point and shoot wouldn't come close to catching it, so for once I didn't have my nose in the camera and just watched the spectacle. Later, I took other people's pictures, which again, DOES NOT represent 1/billionth of what we saw! I know there are more spectacular ones out there with yellows and oranges, but hey, I am DEFINITELY happy with what I saw!!!
I'll let the pictures do the talking, but from zodiac cruises to iceburgs to the cute little plants we saw (yes, there is vegetation in the Arctic, albeit scarce!):
and animals such as the arctic fox and arctic hare,
and of course birds,
to the BIG things like seals and whales (below is the Blue Whale, one of the largest there is! And sorry, it really was hard to see and the way we could identify that it was a blue whale was that it exhaled every 5-7 minutes and has a specific fin):
and going through the largest fjord in the world and going through literally uninhabited and unvisited areas, it was just an amazing trip! East Greenland is absolutely spectacular and one of my favorite memories is going by zodiac through these amazingly humongous iceburgs... the air (and us from amazement!) was so quiet that all you could hear was the crackling of the ice. It was a cloudy morning at first, but then the sun came shining and then came the majestic reflections of the iceburgs in the water and again, if my own eyes weren't seeing it, I could have sworn I was dreaming.
Another favorite memory is while we were at sea going through the Denmark strait, having a lazy sea day, we hear an announcement saying there were a group of Orca whales just in front of the boat. Literally, I have never seen such immediate mass pandemonium. EVERYONE got up and were running in all directions, some for their cameras, some to go to their room to get their coats, and others towards the bow to take pictures. LUCKILY I was in the last group and it was soooooo cool to see not one, not two, but up to 5 Orca whales feeding and swimming literally just yards from the boat. Finally, something up close and personal and not something I would literally have to tell people what it is, i.e. "I swear, that white dot is a polar bear. Oh, and that black dot is a seal"). Haha! Again, I took a few snaps because I knew I would borrow some from other passengers with their fancy cameras and just admired and watched the whales swimming along. "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"... (Finding Nemo is one of my favorite movies), I thought. And they did! They are such amazing creatures, really. And luckily throughout the trip we not only saw Orca whales, but we also saw the Blue Whale, one of the biggest in the whale family, and Fin and Minke whales. Here are a few picts of the big group of Orca whales we saw:
Which, by the way, the one with the big fin is the male and the smaller fin, the female.
Out of the many cool things we did besides zodiac tours,
we stopped in the village of Ittoqqortoormiit, with a whopping population of 469 as of 2010. Although we had earlier been given a lecture on the Inuk inhabitants of this area, Inuk being an Inuit person (Inuit is another term used for Eskimo), for some reason it didn't digest that I would not be seeing typical Scandinavian features of blond hair and blue eyes. Oops. Besides feeling awkwardly ignorant about this, I was taken aback on the beauty of this population.... and the similarity (to me) of the features to Mongolians.
What I did listen to is the background... Ittoqqortoormiit (try saying that 3 times fast) is located on Liverpool Land on the eastern border of Greenland and besides being known for its wildlife, it is also known for the hunting of whales and polar bears, which is a major cultural-economical factor there. Luckily for this area (I'm not going to write it out again), being in the middle of nowhere practically and with the presence of sea ice, their large populations of shrimp and halibut are not exploited. Phew. We also got to see Greenlandic dogs, i.e. huskie dogsledding dogs, and that was SUPER interesting to see. They are a purebreed type of dog, and as we were talked to the owner of the dogs Gary, who BTW, has a great website of all his adventures, www.garyrolfe.com, they "were born to pull massive payloads in bruttle cold." It was so interested to learn about the care and effort that goes into dogsledding, not only for the humans, but for the dogs. Although some were scary,
the other ones were super cute, like these below,
and the puppy below, and I am just flabbergasted on what they go through.
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During the "off-season" they go through hours of rigorous training in preparation for dogsledding in the winter, which the owner of the 16 of them takes them out by himself for literally months at a time. I think he said that in the winter he primarily feeds them seal fat in combination with dog food and also doesn't brush them as much so that they can keep the hair for warmth. One of the Canadians I was sitting next to actually recognized him from this show that featured wildlife adventures and he was a guest! Kinda cool!
And no trip is complete of mine without 029384203 picture of sunsets. Here are my fave's:
And as always, sometimes a trip defines itself by the people you meet, and I was fortunate to have a great group of people on the ship. I had a great roommate and met truly interesting people. It only takes a trip to the Arctic to put yourself in your place with travels. I had always thought I was fortunate to have done the travels I have, BUT I probably was in the minority of people that have traveled to exotic places. I think 1/2 the boat had been to Antarctica and I met a couple that had been to 130+ countries. My 40ish seemed something to laugh at! So I hope to be in touch with those people if not as friends but travel friends. Always looking for travel buddies! :-)
p.s. As I mentioned, most of the pictures here are mine, but others are from fancy cameras that we exchanged amongst ourselves. So thank you to those people!!
p.s.s Here are a couple of remaining fun picts, me being goofy and us... seriously, bumping into an ice burg! We were actually were set for the night and literally the iceburg bumped into us and we really had to work a little to get out! At first it was funny, then a little scary (Titanic anyone?), and then funny again. I temporarily almost forgot about the Northern Lights while we were trying to get away from this ice burg!
