Friday 4 September 2009

Day 26 – 1st September

Today started early than I expected with the first load of gear leaving the ship via the helicopter at around 9am. The helicopter had to be used as Resolute Bay does not have a wharf or pier for the boat to tie up to. My turn to get off soon arrived and wow did the ride make up for the slightly sad occasion of leaving the boat. Although it only took around 1 minute to fly from the ship to the shore, the ride was incredible. The views of Resolute Bay and the ship from the air were stunning and I would have loved it to go on for longer. No wonder those that got to fly during the cruise always came back full of it!

Resolute Bay is certainly an interesting place. From what I can understand it serves no other purpose than being a Canadian presence in the north as well as a staging post for a fair few Arctic expeditions. The landscape is understandably barren, with nothing but bare rock and mud for miles and miles around. There was not any snow on the ground which is a shame as supposedly it’s meant to make the island look stunning. We have two days in Resolute as we wait to fly out on the 3rd. We are staying at the Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP) which is a very comfortable staging post for Arctic Expeditions run by the Canadian government. From leaving the boat to arriving in Resolute (a 1 minute flight as you know) made us lose an hour as the boat time was one hour ahead. This made waiting for lunch particularly hard seeing as we had missed breakfast in the morning.

After a quick check with the base manager to make sure there had been no recent bear sightings we set off for a walk from the airport where PCSP is to the hamlet. Distance are deceiving and the walk ended up being 8km. we had a quick look around the town before catching a ride back to PCSP for diner and an early bed.

No comments:

Post a Comment