Arctic tapas

Tapas are a fab way to get a taste of lots of little things, and have found their way all over the world from Spain, and yes have even reached the Arctic!

Saturday evening (which felt like it was still in the middle of the day) I went on the Longyearbyen Arctic Tapas tour.  It is run by a character called Bent - there is always one person around who is the gregarious character that everyone loves and knows, the kind that no sensible woman would take seriously but just enjoy, who is full of great ideas and has a passion for what he does.  Bent fits the bill!

He has developed an extremely unique and interesting tourist attraction whereby you get to sit in a specially modified bus (with sheepskins covering every seat), travel in style around the sights of Longyearbyen (such as they are) whilst drinking copious quantities of beer, wine or Aquavit, whatever you tipple is, and feast on imaginatively displayed plates of tapas that are specific to the Arctic.

These foods are smoked, dried, or buried for 6 years versions of fish, meat (reindeer) and award- winning blue cheeses, accompanied by seed crackers and numerous tasty relishes.  They were delicious, and the only thing I left on my plate was a lettuce leaf.

While we were eating the tapas (the bus has been modified to contain tables for 2 or 4), Bent drove us around and out of Longyearbyen, filling us in with all sorts of interesting historical tidbits.  Bless him, there were 17 of us on this trip, 16 of whom were Norwegian, and half of those were locals.  He kindly gave the commentary in English, being aware that everyone else would also understand, but also recognizing that they could all engage in lots of banter that would leave me out if he spoke in Norwegian and then translated.  Very thoughtful of him, indeed!

Bent was on a mission to find Wildlife from a moving bus, and the girls in front of me kindly got my attention each time he saw something. So I have now seen my first Arctic fox (or polar fox as they call them here), ptarmigan (totally blending in with the rocks on which it was sitting), barnacle geese, my first reindeer in its natural habitat (thereby discounting the ones I saw on South Georgia, which were introduced, and are now gone I believe), an Arctic tern (seen plenty of them down in Antarctica - nice to see them in the Arctic!), husky dogs, all in 3 hours trundling around dirt roads in the Arctic Tapas bus!

It augers well for polar bear and walrus from the ship, and apparently there should be no good reason not to see Beluga whales!

All I need is the air that I breathe......

....to sleep!!  I don't remember the air in a plane being so dry before.  You get warned all the time about pressurised cabin air and its desiccating and dehydrating effects. It normally doesn't affect me so much, but this time I really felt it. Despite the luxury of a first class suite, I found the air to be  hot and dry, so much so that my nostrils kept drying out, and while I did sleep, every time I woke up my mouth was so dry my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth!  There is a personal mini bar in the suite so I drank it dry of all types of water and juice! I did only have one glass of champagne at the start! Oh, and a G&T before dinner, and one glass of red wine with dinner!  I don't usually drink much alcohol on planes for that very reason of dehydration!

I have always loved the pseudo night sky that Emirates have in their long-haul aircraft.  It looks so pretty even though I suspect nobody is ever taken in believing it helps them sleep!  Even on a true flat-lying bed with a fluffy doona and groovy updated soft cotton PJs to keep you warm!

First Class Wallow

OK so I managed to upgrade from Business to First Class to use up some points.  There is method to the madness here - going on a photography trip to the Arctic (or Antarctica) requires the packing of many items which normally I would not travel with.  These items are hefty, and if one wants to experience a fairly hassle free journey which is taking her around to the other side of the world, and up almost as far as she can go, it is worth going for the upgrade to ensure the extra luggage weight, both in check-in and carry-on.  That's my excuse, anyway.  It worked!

So the first thing I do after getting to my suite is of course have another glass of champagne. The journey really begins for me then!

It looks so cheery with all the lights on to greet you!

Svalbard Adventure 2015 - NEW!

On my way!

Getting picked up from home by the Emirates chauffeur does not guarantee you will get dropped off at Departures at Perth International Airport! Due to the current extensive renovations and earthworks happening at the airport, traffic is being diverted away from the road leading right past the entrance doors to Terminal 1 doors. This means that several airport workers in fluoro colours are needed to direct the poor passengers with huge suitcases along the parallel road in the car-park, which is also lined with fluoro, so that we find out way to the entrance which is now quite a distance away from the original drop-off point that we are familiar with!

Once inside, it is apparent that none of the Emirates desks are open yet.  Apparently they only open three hours before the flight, which in this case will be no earlier than 1510!

That part was easy -  the horrendous part was the long, long (5 parallel lines!) crocodile queue waiting to pass through the new Immigration system.  It took me 35 minutes.  It might have been quicker if all 12 desks had been occupied instead of the four that were!  Once through, there is a new baggage check-in system, which for a change is now more efficient and streamlined than before - 3 big long belts, and really big trays that zoom along the rollers for all baggage items!

Phew! Now for some Moët champagne in the Emirates Lounge, ready for the first (Class) leg of the journey!

The End of the Adventure

I am on Air New Zealand flight 161 heading directly home from Christchurch to Perth, and suffering almost immediate anticlimax at the end of an amazing adventure.  Tonight I will be sleeping in my own bed, unbelievably last night I was sleeping on the ship! It is always a wrench saying goodbye to people you have met on trips, and this was a very special group in many ways, very easy to get along with.  The connections I made particularly with the wonderful staff I hope to consolidate, and I feel some of them are destined to become good friends! 

I will shortly update the blog with more detail and add the pictures, so watch this space!

It is a privilege to visit any part of Antarctica, but this is the part very few people get to visit.  Put Antarctica on the Bucket List!

Snares Cruising..or not!

Yet another day's sail towards the final stop on this epic adventure, the Snares islands, and people are definitely going stir crazy again!  The seas have been relatively calm, and enabled many to venture outside for bird photography and some fresh air. We missed the Snares on the way down due to the excessive turbulence, and it was no guarantee that the zodiac cruising would go ahead.

However at 0630 we got the wake up call to man the zodiacs for a pre-breakfast cruise along the rugged muscovite granite rocks which are the Snares. At least, most of us heard the call.  I didn't!  So a very disappointed geologist was left to forlornly watch the zodiacs cruise along the shoreline, looking for the endemic Snares crested penguins, whilst she practiced her bird photography on the wheeling   Albatross and sooty shearwaters (I did mention bird nerd!).

Highlight of the day as we left the shelter of the Snares to head home to the port of Bluff were a pod of around six orcas or killer whales swimming right alongside the ship, weaving under and across and playing with us for around an hour or so!  Makes everything worth it!

Campbell Island and the World's Loneliest Tree

               

You cannot imagine how glad 50-odd stir-crazy people sailing one of the older ladies of Russian research vessels were after reaching the shelter of Perseverance Harbour on Campbell Island, one of the World Heritage listed New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands.  Apart from many, many trips up and down stairs, there is really nowhere to go to get some exercise to burn off the calories delivered to us every day by the two superb chefs on the vessel! So the prospect of either a 12km “Long Walk” or a 5km “Short Walk” on the island was appealing to just about everyone, including the Russian staff.

There is a very well-constructed boardwalk for the Short Walk which leads up to the nesting site of the southern Royal Albatross on the western side of the island. However, it is mostly uphill, and the steps have quite a high rise.  A challenge for those with Bad Knees, but gotta say mine held up really well – a bit stiff from using muscles that haven’t been used in a while, but overall I am excited about the very possibility that most of my knee issues will become a thing of the past.

Prevailing easterly winds has meant the island has been shrouded in fog and light rain for most of the day.  Up in the hills, the endemic “megaherbs” are sight to be seen (more about them later) and also the nests of the Albatross.

A couple of hours resting in the tussock grass waiting for the albatross to start doing something (they have been described as being like teenagers, sleeping until around noon then starting to move after that!) did not alter the wetness factor, but it was still fun.  After waiting for around 4 hours, I moved my stiff muscles out of the tussock grass for a short meander back up the hill to the end of the boardwalk to warm up the muscles for the tricky descent down.  Tricky because it is much harder on knees going downhill than uphill, and combined with tiredness and sore muscles, could have represented a recipe for disaster!

Safely back on the ship, a hilarious auction in the bar for the Last Ocean organisation, which helps to monitor and hopefully eventually prevent the over-fishing of the Antarctic toothfish, was brilliantly handled by Lloyd.  I was very glad that my hand-knitted silk scarf went for $160, and that Catherine eventually ended up with it, as she had her eyes on it from the start.  As it was a gift from Wiebke, I have now undertaken to make her one as well.

A great Red Wine dinner with Cath, Nigel, Scott, Lloyd and Wiebke – they have been fantastic staff, great fun to be around, and hopefully we have all made the connections to become friends.  They know there is Open House in Perth for them!

Today an early morning zodiac cruise in the mist eventually led us to Camp Cove, where apart from a very stroppy sea lion, there grows the “Loneliest Tree in the World”, a spruce,  which during the time the island was “colonised” regularly had its top lopped off – probably for a Christmas tree!!