A beautiful sunny morning with clear skies and only a few distant clouds, made this the perfect day to go on a boat trip. Which I was already booked in to do.
A maxi taxi collected fellow voyagers from surrounding guesthouses and me at 8:30 am. By 9 am the passenger deliveries had been completed and we were setting sail.
The 'Polar Girl' is a red and white painted vessel. It looks as though at some time in its life it has been an off shore trawler, but now it is set up to carry passengers. Not the lap of luxurary but comfortable enough. There is a lounge with bar for coffee and drinks. Next to that cabin is a dinning room. It is possible to go out onto the fore deck from this area or go back and down to the aft deck. You can also go up two open decks for better views. There was an invitation to go into the wheel house and chat to the captain.
The aft deck had picnic tables and chairs and it was here that the hot meal was served. It was spaghetti with a salmon cream sauce to go on top plus bread. Drinks were charged for. At first I enjoyed the meal but I did find in the end that it made me feel a bit unsettled. I go out on the same boat in a different direction on Saturday and I am betting that the meal will be the same.
We sailed down the Advevtfjorden which is the one Longyearbyen is situated on before joining up with the much larger Isfjorden. As we set out we passed the edge of town, the airport and a number of scattered housing along the coast until we soon passed the end of the road. This would be less than 10 km from the town.
We sailed down the centre of the fjord with snow covered mountains in the distance in every direction. The had varying amounts of snow cover but the tops were always white. I began to pick out the various glaciers some of which end in the sea.
There were a number of surface swimming and diving birds around. They were small but I do not know their name. At one point there was great excitement as we sighted a White Whale (Beluga). I really can not say I saw anything. Yes there was a quick flick or a tail on the surface – well I think that is what it was but it was too far away to see much. I don't think Beluga jump out up out of the sea like some whales do. A bit of an anit climax really especially as I have seen whole schools or pods of them from the air in Canada.
As we headed into a glacier, we passed three seals at different distances sleeping on floating ice. It was a magical experience approaching the glacier. The floating ice was just small pancakes, although over near one shore was a much larger ice sheet which had not yet broken up in to the smaller pieces we were passing.
While there was a yacht in close to the glacier, our ship stayed a much greater distance from it than I had expected. Perhaps the sea was too shallow, but I never found out. I don't think that we were actually told. My pick is that we stood off at least a kilometre from the glacier. Certainly we did not go anywhere as near as we had at Tracy Arm in Alaska. There were mini icebergs floating there as well.
We headed out of the glacier's fjord and across Isfj orden to another fjord. As we did so, the hot meal was served.
We were heading for a mining settlement. This one is inhabited whereas most of the old mining settlements are often, long, abandoned. But we were heading for Barentburg which is a Russian coal mining settlement. However, as they have had a fire in the mine for a couple of years, very limited production takes place at present. None is leaving the port and only enough to run the local power and heating plant is extracted.
The settlement was similar in many ways to the mining towns I passed going in and out of Murmansk. There were a number of older buildings, some no longer in use, some still in use. They were in various states of disrepair. One had a line of nesting seagulls above all the windows. However, there are modern buildings, mostly built in the utilitarian Soviet style. But there were none of the really high rise apartment buildings. Perhaps four levels was the highest. They had a modern hospital building, a traditional style church, a post office, a large enclosed swimming pool and a couple of souvenir shops. We saw in their hotel at which it is possible to stay. Light wood panels, long tables and bench seating. They had some sample meals set out and they looked very familiar Russian.
Roads were made from large slabs of concert with steel loops in each corner to aid placing or lifting them.
There is a school but not a lot of students. Once they reach the last two senior years they have to return to Russian to complete their schooling.
There is no money in the settlement. All the inhabitants have electronic cards and there are used a bit like debit cards I suppose. However in the souvenir shops they were happy to take Norwegian currency. I wish I had thought to bring my left over rubbles.
While our ship birthed and one of the wharves, the settlement itself is built high up on a series of terraces. There was a general moan when our guide told us that there were 240 steps to climb. There were several senior citizens in our small group and they made slow progress. I was glad that I had been doing so much walking as I think I handled the climb better than I expected.
There was a sense of some pollution and I think coal was lying around mixed with the stones and gravel. There was little vegetation because of the climate. The mine was a couple of kilometres away and a rail track carried the wagons to and from the mine head.
At the wharves there are bulk loading systems.
In a prominent position there was a bust of Lenin. Our guide told ua that every town in Russia had or will still have such a statue and none is the same. Each is an individually designed and produced item.
At one end of the town was a small science community with varying numbers scientists present at any one time.
The population is made up of Russian and Ukrainian workers there although previously there were others from the now independent Soviet states. They sign on for a two year contract and then can leave or resign. The guide did say something about a current option of a six months contract as well.
We had 90 minutes on land here and it went rather quickly I thought. I didn't get to the museum and I don't think any one actually did. I was interested to learn that they have a helicopter and can go into Longyearbyen a couple times a week. A place from Moscow comes every two months with supplies and mail I expect. Sometimes a ship comes as well.
So the whole community just exists there waiting for the mine fire to go out and for full production to start up again.
So now on this trip I have had the chance to look in on two different samples of Russian life.
We set sail, well actually motored, back to base. This was a couple of hour long and so I think the vessel went a bit faster than it did in the morning. We slowed down as we passed another very small abandoned mining settlement. About six multi story buildings, all very much abandoned. The Norwegian Government has decreed that any pre-1946 remains are protected. So from what I can read, there are a lot of little huts and foundations around the islands which are protected.
Along the cliffs I spotted a mine shaft coming our on the cliff face. I wondered if it was an entrance or just a ventilation shaft.
We also slowed down a little as we passed some bird roosting and hatching areas high up on steep cliffs. I got a much closer view of this sort of thing on the King Crab safari. We passed a zodiac with perhaps a dozen passengers who were on a bird watching trip. I am glad I didn't book on that, as although they were closer to the cliff, the birds were in general, still too high to get a decent photograph.
Back at the wharf maxi taxis were waiting to takes use back to our accommodation. As we neared our Guesthouse the same old reindeer as I saw yesterday came ambling along the road.
Although I had not done a lot of walking today I had done a lot of standing as there was no good seating on the foredeck. So much to my surprise I did feel rather tired and exhausted for a while. But now four hours later I am a 'box of birds'.
It is 10 pm and somewhere the sun is shining. A small group have just walked up the road towards the glacier. An evening stroll perhaps.
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