Advertisement
Published: June 29th 2017
Geo: 78.21, 15.61
Svalbard. 1.30am. The land of the midnight sun. Eternal Summer Sunshine. The breathtaking magnificence of the Arctic from our 737 jet. Mountains, whitecaps and untouched wilderness greet us as we touch down on the tiny runway in Longyearbyen. We have arrived at the most northern city on the planet. The airport terminal is a single building. There is no option on how passengers get to their accommodation. There is one shuttle bus, and everyone is on it. Between April and October, the sun never sets here. The bus clock reads 12.35. Its wrong, but is that am or pm, its strange to consider. Around 2,000 people live here in Longyearbyen, the only major settlement on a minor continent around the size of Great Brittan. More polar bears live here than people. The islands of Svalbard and Jan Mayen are governed by Norway.
The city of Longyearbyen was founded around 1900. It is is tucked into a valley on the water, surrounded by towering mountains. Our accommodation at the Spitsbergen Guesthouse, is on a hill, around 20 minutes walk from the centre of Longyearbyen. It used to serve as lodging for the miners here and has since been converted to a
backpacker style hotel across several large cabin buildings. We are in cabin 2, on the second floor. We have two single beds in a private room with clean share toilet and shower facilities and a lounge down the hall. There is a fully equipped kitchen upstairs. We collapsed into comfy beds around 3am. The room can be made relatively dark with blinds and curtains.
A bit over 6 hours later, we are up again for an included buffet breakfast. Its a decent spread, no hot food, but cereal, toast, juice, fruit cold cuts and cheeses. Today was a free day to explore, and perhaps book some more activities and excursions.
The summer climate in Svalbard is surprisingly mild for such a northern location. Its mostly cloudy with light rain and 5 to 12C. Today was dry as we headed down the hill from our guesthouse to the city. It took only 5 minutes for our first local animal sighting! I spotted a small arctic fox, chasing a bird around the rocky surrounds of our accommodation. I was amazed and fascinated by the derelict ruins that scattered the mountainside. Whilst it today serves as mainly a research city, Longyearbyen was founded as
a mining colony. Evidence of this is everywhere, old ruined mines, towers, huts and even a cable car system can be seen all over the mountains. The buildings are upto a 100 years old, or what is left of them. Their remains stand untouched, wooden planks and ruins left scattered about, lying where they come to rest. The location of some of these delapitated buildings and their state boggled my mind. How were they built on such surfaces, how did workers access them, how was ore transported, was it ever remotely safe, how would it have been to work here in eternal darkness and snow in the polar night?
The city feels like a large snow resort. There are 4 or 5 restaurants, cafes, a small shopping centre, clothing stores (mostly sport and ski gear), a school, hall, theatre, museum, about six hotels, car dealer, bank, supermarket and post office. First stop was a tourist centre. We booked a husky ride for tomorrow, and glacier hike for the following day. After that we have our prebooked expedition to Pyramiden. For our last day, we are considering a fossil finding trip.
We picked up a hotdog each for lunch at around $10AUD. Reasonable.
The cinema shows a movie once a week every Sunday. We are not sure if we will be back from Pyramiden for this weeks screening of the Lone Ranger.
We headed on to the Svalbard museum which offered an interesting account of Svalbard's history, information on culture, local flora and fauna and some stuffed animals and displays for good measure. From here we went exploring. Around the museum, there was a walk from the city's edge to a lake lookout down the road. Generally, you are prohibited from wandering too far from town without a rifle to deal with a possible polar bear encounter. The short walk was still too close to town for polar bears to be a threat. Not so for arctic turns; a small grouchy bird in breeding season. As we started our walk, a sign advised we should take a stick from the stand and hold it above our head to fond up death from above (by bird attack). The sign wasn't kidding and stick was required. At the end of the road, a wilderness lookout by the local zoo. Not really a zoo, but holding place for huskys, sled dogs, howling with delight at the prospect
of feeding time.
Rather than dine at an expensive local restaurant tonight, we decided to buy groceries at the supermarket and cook our own meal. Alcohol here was cheap really, so we bought a discount wine cask and a few beers. Dinner was crumbed fish, vegetables and chips. With drinks it turned out to cost about $15Aud each. We also bought a pizza for tomorrows lunch. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards and lying on the lounge couch watching TV. It was strange to do so, the first real time since Australia. A bit of rest was welcome as we are both fighting off sickness, with me slowly recovering and Nat starting to get a bit ill.
Tomorrow our sledding tour is at 3, so we have a free morning. What an experience Svalbard is going to be!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.036s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0172s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
