My Birthday in the Capitol of Nunavut Territory, Canada

After ten hours of warm, restful sleep, I was able to wake up and just walk to the bathroom!  No crawling over a plywood base to get out through a zippered hole in an unheated tent!  The week on the floe ice was definitely worth the inconveniences and pain, but it was definitely nice to not have the pain any longer!  I didn't really feel like having breakfast, but still wanted my tea.  Even on the floe edge, I hadn't gone without my morning hot tea!  So, I went to the dining room and picked up some extra tea bags and sweetener so I could have tea till lunch time!  I repacked everything for traveling home, meaning hoping my carry-on bag would be gate checked so I didn't have to deal with it and making the checked bag as heavy as I could in case I did have to carry my cabin bag!  The only thing I wanted in the cabin with me was the camera gear and my meds.  Going home, I don't particularly care if my luggage gets lost.  Granted, they are getting better, but airlines are still losing luggage enough that I prefer to have at least one set of what I absolutely need with me when I hit the ground, especially if I don't expect to have time to replace them.  I was able to do this packing in a warm, comfortable environment!  So nice!  Check-out time was pretty good.  

One of our group was down with a stomach bug, probably the same thing that was going around, or it could have been what she was calling "shaken soup syndrome" from the long and bumpy komatik ride after eating soup.  Either way, she wasn't up to getting herself packed and ready to go.  This group had been great about helping each other and looking out for each other.  Other than selecting sleeping bags (when it was like Lord of the Flies), we pooled resources and were mindful of making sure we knew where everybody was.  I recognized just how bossy I can be when I went to help get her packed.  She brough everything in just a cabin bag.  She had used compression bags to be able to do it.  I usually find I can pack more by just tightly rolling and stuffing my clothes into various areas of my case.  Packing cubes, even compression ones, tend to cause too much wasted space for me.  The others trying to get her packed didn't seem to know how to use her compression bags, either, so I just took charge and packed her up.  I also convinced (read "ordered") her to eat some toast to try to change the pH balance of her gut.  They probably wouldn't let her on the plane if she was still throwing up.  Gosh, I sure am bossy!  And apparently not just to family members!  I'm so sorry to all of you I've bossed around for no good reason!

After a wonderful lunch of chicken sandwich and sweet potato fries, many of our group walked around Pond Inlet.  I chose to just hang out in the recliner in the hotel, relaxing, and waiting for time to go to the airport.  The visitor's center was closed.  Apparently, the Parks Canada office was open, though, and the guy in there was happy to fill the time talking about the wildlife and lifestyles of the locals.  Kind of wishing I had gone, but not really regretting it.

We all went to the airport early because Jim said the plane was coming in early and that if somebody came in with a medical flight, the last one checked in is the one that gets bumped.  So we hung out at the airport, and soon after we got there and got checked in, a lady who was also on our flight from Ottawa to Iqaluit who spent some time chatting with us (almost seeming like part of our group) came in with her daughter to see us off.  She was staying in Pond Inlet even after her grandson's graduation to spend some time with her daughter's family.  Such a small town and small airport.  No real security.  Non-passengers can go to the gate with you (the only room that isn't a private office or bathroom).  Shades of pre-2000's air travel!  We used half of the plane when it boarded with the front half being used for cargo.

We landed in Iqaluit just after dinner time and took Caribou Cabs to our hotel, the Frobisher Inn, where Eagle-Eye's credit card was promptly declined.  We messaged Eagle-Eye, and while waiting for the issue to be resolved, I put my card down so I could go ahead and get in my room.  Some others did, too.  Soon after I got settled into my room, while I was FB video calling with Bruce, we got a message that the problem had been fixed.  None of my business what it was, but it was probably something like the card that had been put on reserve had expired, and somebody forgot to update them with the new card.  Not like that's never happened to me before.  Once it was resolved, the hotel erased my information and charged Eagle-Eye.  Dinner was no longer being served, which didn't concern me.  I wasn't really that hungry.  I could have gotten a burger or pizza out of a machine, but naah.  I just went up, took a shower, and hit the sack.  Another good, long sleep, this time without black-out drapes, but it got dusk, so not so bad.

This picture was taken from one floor lower and a few rooms to the right of the first one I took on the way up.  It was also taken in the morning, after I woke up.  You can't see the lights from the buildings this time because they aren't on.  You can still see the frozen Frobisher Bay, which is brown on top, supposedly from the dirt on land blowing onto the ice.  Plus, the bay is supposedly somewhat shallow, so some of the mud from the seabed gets into the ice.

I had breakfast with a few ladies from our group, then went back to my room to pack and get ready to leave.  We were mostly all meeting at check-out time, storing our bags, and exploring the town of Iqaluit, the capitol of the Nunavut Territory.  We had about six hours free between check-out time and the time we needed to leave for the airport and some folks wanted to buy souvenirs.  Me?  I wanted to see the museum and town.

Almost directly across from our hotel was the medical center.  I loved the murals on the retaining walls in the front.

These Inutsuks are everywhere.  They are historically trail markers, but with the meanings of the two words that form the name, "inuk" (person) and "suk" (substitute), and the meaning of the word "inutsuk" itself (that which acts in the capacity of a human), they are popularly being used to symbolize guidance, unity, and working toward a common goal.

The town has an amazing amount of sculptures and rock carvings all over.  This one stands in front of the Royal Bank of Canada branch.  It is much more detailed than I can show in a thumbnail picture.  If you can blow it up, you can see how detailed it actually is.

While at a carving shop, we saw the raw stones they work with.  These stones are harvested in other places and have to be shipped up to Iqaluit.  Because of the weight, it has to ship by ship, and the ships have to wait until the ice melts.  Only then can the carvers actually make things like that lovely black narwhal in the second picture or the polar bear (or other items) in the one below it.

We also learned some of the legends of Sedna, thanks to one of our group recognizing her and purchasing a carving.  There are multiple versions, but the one we heard went like this.  Sedna was unhappy with the marriage prospects her father was getting and ran off with the man of her choosing.  Once they arrived at his place, he revealed his true identity, which was that of a dog.  When her father came to visit and learned that she was married to a dog, he took her in his kayak to take her back home.  The sea became rough, and to save himself, he threw her overboard to try to stabilize the kayak, but she grabbed the side of the kayak, making it more unstable.  Her father took a hatchet and cut off her fingers and pushed her into the sea.  Her fingers became the sea creatures (whales and seals, especially) and she ruled over them from the depths.  There are multiple other versions, but they all end with Sedna's father cutting off her fingers and sending her to the depths and her fingers becoming the marine mammals.

Designs were carved into rocks in multiple places around town.

We ducked into the Black Heart Cafe where I tried caribou and shrimp spring rolls.

The faces of assembly members are carved on this side of the stone in front of the assembly building.

We made it to the museum.  Basically three rooms and a gift shop, but very informative!

And they have my favorite!!  A touch table!!

With a sign that clearly says to "go ahead and feel the textures in the materials!"  Oh was I in heaven!  I thought the polar bear fur was actually softer than the Arctic fox fur.

That explains why the claw marks are so deep in the footprints!

This carving was on a whale rib bone.  Probably a bowhead whale, but we didn't ask that specific.  Each of the two local communities is allowed to take one bowhead whale every other year.

On the way back to the hotel, we passed lots of pussy willow.  I haven't seen it wild for many years!

When we got to the airport, the guy at check-in said he'd do what he could to keep the seat next to me empty since it was my birthday, and he did!  Of course, we had to establish that it really was my birthday, and he was looking at the expiration date of my passport!  I really wasn't born four years in the future!  It was a lovely flight back to Ottowa with a late check-in at the hotel. 

About five hours later, I was headed back to the airport for my flight home.  It was uneventful, and I slept most of the way.  This was an amazing trip and a fabulous birthday, but I was ready to get home and see those I love!  Gotta rest up for the next adventure!

Final Day on the Ice

I woke up this morning feeling elated that I would not have to climb through that tent hole again!!  Yay!!  Lnight was also the first time I needed to use the bowl I brought to use as a chamber pot, too, so I set that bowl (with a lid on it) carefully out into the vestibule and threw everything else that belonged to me out further.  When I climbed out, I went to the bathroom and dumped my chamber pot, then gathered all of my outside layers and toiletries and headed to the dining tent to get ready for the day.  Seemed like everybody was up early compared to the rest of the week.  Oatmeal was set out for breakfast, but Ken had Elisha toast me a bagel since I don't eat oatmeal.  While that was going on, I went back out and shoved everything into my bags and set my bags in the middle of camp for the guides to load onto komatiks for going back.  Ken said we had time for a short trip to the floe ice one last time.  Lee was staying back with some of the other guides to supervise packing up camp, so our komatik was hooked tandem to another komatik, and Inuit guide, Gary, pulled both of them.  It was a pleasant drive to the floe ice, and I had the opportunity to take pix of the other members of the group and guides since I was now in the back of the caravan instead of the front.

We got to the floe edge, and it was relatively clear of ice.  It was also relatively clear of wildlife.  In the time we were there, we saw one bird.  Not one type of bird.  One. Bird.  He was a black guillemot, and I did get the shot of him taking off.  You can see his little, red, webbed feet running on the water.

We got the primary targets for the tour, which were narwhals and polar bears.  There were other animals that I didn't get pictures of.  The animals I didn't see that others did were:  snow goose, northern fulmar, sandhill crane (I heard him, though), and the Lapland longspur.  Animals I saw but didn't get pictures of were:  common eider duck, long-tailed duck, red phalarope, pomarane jaeger, parasitic jaeger, Iceland gull, and the common raven.  There were other possible animals on the species list, but they aren't overly common in the area.  The bowhead whale and walrus are more common in other spots.  I may consider doing Eagle-Eye's tour to see them (which would use a hotel every night) or I may see about getting those in Alaska.

When we got back to camp, most things had been packed up.

The bathroom was the last thing to go!

We left the kitchen and dining tents for the next group, which will come in a week later.  

Crawling over the cooler on our komatik was also painful on my knees, so I was also looking forward to not doing that again.  I was expecting the ride back out to be as cold as the ride in, but it really wasn't so bad.  Three hours, but we didn't have any huge wind blowing against us making the wind from the drive extra cold.  Plus, I had gotten more acclimated to it and knew more of how to dress.  We saw a few more seals hanging out and there were more cracks than I remember coming in.  I don't remember the gulls hanging out by the cracks coming in, but I didn't really pay that much attention to the gulls coming in.  For some reason, I didn't do many pictures on the way home.  We did stop at a lovely iceberg about halfway between our camp and Pond Inlet.  One of our group used her timer and monopod to take a group shot.  The four people on the right as well as the three sitting/kneeling are our local Inuit guides.  The man in the blue coat beside them is Ken, our tour leader with Eagle Eye, and the rest is our motley crew of campers!

Another vantage point of the same iceberg.  Getting up close to these icebergs to really be able to look at them from various perspectives was an amazing experience all its own.  Seeing the impact they have on the floe ice is also highly interesting.  These are things you can't get on a cruise, even an expedition cruise.

We finally pulled into Pond Inlet, where Jim from the hotel was waiting to pick us up and take us and our bags to the hotel.  I looked back at my pictures, and this hillside was pretty much covered in snow when we left.   When we got back, you could see the letters in the hillside.  We commented often on the way back about the melt that had occurred on the Eclipse Sound between the time we went to the floe edge and the time we got back, too.  I'm glad I went on the earlier of the two offered times, both in June.  Our guides and other locals said the ice in the Eclipse Sound is usually fully melted by the end of July, and that it will likely start refreezing in November.  

When we got to the hotel, we had hot showers, and Jim assured us that the water heaters could handle all of us, so no concerns about running out.  I used the whole hotel-sized bottle of conditioner, and my hair still wanted more.  I was clean and warm for the first time in days!  When I went to the dining room for dinner, it was hard to recognize a lot of our group!  The hotel even offered free use of washers and dryers with free laundry soap.  Dinner was lovely.  Salad as an appetizer followed by a huge pork chop with a delicious sauce, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob.  Delicious!

I walked across to the Co-Op Express to get a soda pop, the first one since we left Ottawa, closed the heavy-duty black-out drapes, and then collapsed in bed!

 

Going on a (Polar) Bear Hunt!

This morning was particularly cold, but the wind was not so strong.  I put my base layer on and my boots and opened up my tent to see that even with the outer flap closed, the snow had blown into the vestibule.  I'm glad I brought my boots in!  I put some outer layers on the bottom, laying my middle layers on top and headed to the bathroom tent.  It was still standing, thankfully.  Then, I grabbed my outer layers and headed to the dining tent to finish dressing.  The guides seemed to sleep in this morning, which meant the generator didn't start till late which meant there was no heat in the dining tent until later.  But as people woke up, body heat started warming up the tent.  One of our group took pictures of the tents with snow on them this morning.  I didn't.  I was too busy trying to not get cold while getting dressed and going to the bathroom!  It did snow a little, but most of this was blown up by the wind!

While we were eating our breakfast egg burritos, someone from a neighboring camp came by the let us know a polar bear was in the area, having just walked through their camp!  Considering how vicious polar bears can be, my hat's off to those guys for not shooting him while in the camp!  He could be seen by the spotting scope from our camp, and Ken estimated that he was probably just over a kilometer from us.  We all hurriedly loaded on the komatiks and took off after him.  Polar bears usually give full camps a wide berth because they don't like groups of people.  They will quickly attack individuals, but groups are a different story.  Our goal, aside from getting good pictures, was to scare him away from camps with the Skidoo engine noise.  We succeeded, and we took lots of pictures while we herded him toward the floe edge.  The guides estimated him to be about a 4-year-old male, only weaned for a short while.

My first look at him, he was behind some drifts.

You can see his gait while he was running.

He slowed down to a fast walk.  We were driving, so lots of shaking.

We would move him toward the floe edge, then stop and watch him for a while.  If he started trying to turn away from the water, one of the guides would maneuver their Skidoo and komatik to cut him off and set him back on the right direction.

When I first looked at these pictures, I thought he had a stick stuck to his tail, but I couldn't figure where he got the stick.  When I went back through all the photos and looked at the progression, I realized, he had to do his business!  I would probably be growling under similar circumstances!

Once he got close enough to the water, we left him alone.  He saw a ringed seal and ran toward it, but it ducked down into its hole before he got there.

The guides said they swim well, but they don't hunt well in the water.  It would have been nice to watch him navigating the brash ice, but we had already made him anxious enough and reinforced the idea that he should be afraid of groups of people.  We didn't need to continue just for our entertainment.

We went to a spot on the floe edge where he was not likely to go.  The brash ice had been blown in close to the edge, so not much hope that narwhals would come in.  We saw some birds and a couple of ringed seals.  I talked with Nina, our only woman guide, who described how they Inuit hunt seals.  They like to eat all parts of the seal, including the brain, so they don't shoot it.  They stand quietly by a seal hole and wait for the water to start rocking up and down.  That signifies that a seal is about to come up to the ice.  As it comes up, you quickly hook it with a large hook you hold in one hand while hitting it over the head with the other hand.  They usually just use their hands.

Glaucous Gull.  These are one of the largest gulls.

Ringed seal

Thick-billed Murre

Glaucous Gull

Ringed seal

One of our guides had a drone that he sent out looking.  There were narwhals in the area, but they weren't coming in from the brash ice.  These are the shots he got with his drone.

After lunch of a rice noodle soup and sandwiches, we moved to another location.  There was still a lot of brash ice there, too, so I didn't even get out of the komatik this time.  Got some more bird shots.  

Red Phalaropes

Glaucous Gulls and a Black-Legged Kittiwake

Thick-Billed Murres supposedly headed to the migratory bird sanctuary on Bylot Island

On the way back to camp, we stopped by a seal hole to get a good, close look at one.  We were almost all very curious, and the guides were happy to sate our curiosity whenever they could!

The brown things in there is fur that gets scraped off when hauling out of the water or dropping back in.

One of our group sent a GoPro down the hole to see what was there, but it was just dark water.  Nothing exciting.

We finished going back to camp, and Nina wrote all of our names in Inuktitut, the local native language.  I'm going to mount it onto some magnet paper and put it on the refrigerator!

And for our last dinner in camp, she and Elisha made a delicious dinner of Arctic char, rice pilaf, mashed potatoes, and carrots and brocolli.

Following dinner, photo dumping, and some chit-chat, I headed to the painful crawl into my tent for the last time!