Day 9 (6-17-12)

Hey Everybody!


Once again it's late and I am just getting to today's adventures. I was so tired by 9pm, but then one of the guides brought out his guitar. You know I cannot walk away from an acoustic guitar.... And now it's after 12am.

So, we have one excursion left tomorrow. Then we head back to Longyearbyen for a few hours before our flight to Oslo. Before that happens here is the one piece of proof that I do wear jackets in cold weather :-).

There were two excursions today. The first one this morning was at an old whaling village in Bourbonhamna. The whalers left piles and piles if Beluga whale bones on the shore - a great deal of them are still there & protected as cultural remains. The hut is well-maintained & still used. And there are several old wooden boats along the shoreline in various stages of decay.

As an aside, during the first day or two of the trip one of the guides cautioned us against judging the whalers by our modern values re: whales. While it didn't make it any less difficult to see thousands and thousands of slaughtered whales' bones from the 1930s, it effectively stopped me from reacting as harshly as I could have. I'm still not sure the guide's position is sound, but it gave me time to better formulate my thoughts.

Anyway....this morning was the first time we were permitted to wander on our own. No group walks or activities for 2.5hrs!! The guides with rifles were positioned at various points that defined the boundaries for us. I was free to wander from the coastline to the high point. The only bummer about this stop is that the rocks were not eye-catching like yesterday when I didn't have time to take pics.

If you look closely you can see those tiny purple flowers growing where the old whale bones rest.

Shortly after lunch we went out for our second excursion at Camp Miller in an alpine tundra setting. There was a failed attempt at gold mining here. It's a beautiful spot...and until maybe 17,000 years ago was a beach. There are very old whale bones far from shore that the guides believe used to lie on the ocean floor. The assumption is that the whalers would have been "too lazy" to drag bones so far from the shore and village.

This trip we returned to guide-led walking groups only. I did notice several piles of bear scat, so I must conclude they are right to keep us in groups. The unexpected pleasure of this outing was the close encounter with reindeer.

If you are ever in a place where you can observe reindeer, then sit down. They were much more curious about us in that position. They kept some distance between us, but one of them came closer than the others & as luck would have it I was in exactly the right place! Capt. Heidi - this is for you! The reindeer below kept looking (it seemed) right at me and continued to walk toward me.

This one was most likely born in May:

The other really cool feature here was the rocks on the shoreline. They remind me of parts of California, as well as parts of Maine's coast - although not nearly as stunning or dramatic.

Dana/Nora: remember Pt. Lobos? Similar, but not as grand dontcha think?

I think that's it for tonight.