Into Darkness
Looking out the window of the plane at 11:00 and realising it was turning to night outside - and that this was the last time I was going to see the sun for four days was a weird experience. Of course it made me tired, and I fell asleep for 15mins or so, but probably didn’t lose much action anyway.
The Islands of Svalbard are about midway between continental Norway and the North Pole, with Longyearbyen being at 78 degrees north. In January it’s usually between -13 and -20 degrees up there, and with a cold front moving in over mainland Norway the days my brother and I were going there did affect how we packed. It was however a pleasant surprise that it was just around -5.
We kicked off directly with some dog sledding, booked to pick us up just a few hours after our planned arrived. The word being “planned”, as ice on the wings in Oslo gave us a delayed start, and even the same delay when we were going back some days later.
Husky sledding was a cool experience. The farm had 178 dogs, of all ages, and with a breed like this they should stay outside, or they lose their ability to get the tick fur needed for artic climates.
For my brother this was the highlight of the trip, but for me it was pretty much either sitting on the sled or standing in the back and yelling orders from time to time. Didn’t really help that I changed my shoes for the ones they had out there, and was freezing my feet off most of the trip. Still enjoyed it, and loved to see how excited the dogs were to go out.
Next morning, well it’s night 24 hours, but as it was 09:00, just let’s say morning. Anyway, it started with a trip to an ice cave which we thought was in the city somewhere. It wasn’t. About 2,5 hours hike up a mountain, walking in deep snow, but with snowshoes was to me a really cool experience, but my brother got too tired long before we got up. He did however finish and got to see the awesome cave as well. The cave had to be dug out as it had snowed in, and then we had to climb a rope to get down into it. For me this was by far the best experience of the trip, and to mention that; the trip down the mountain took about 1/5 of the time climbing it.
We’d planned getting a local guided tour in the afternoon, but my brother wanted to move this to the next day and relax a bit instead. We thought it was a walking tour, but when we did take this the next morning we were picked up in a maxi taxi which drove us all around. This trip took us to the old mines, to some great viewpoints, the global seed vault and of course plenty of facts about the city and Iceland. This was by far the cheapest activity we did, but still very good. In the afternoon we’d booked a trip with a snowmobile which the girls in the reception didn’t really recommend, and to be honest it wasn’t really much more than actually driving a snowmobile out to some flats and see if we could see some northern light, but it never promised anything else either, so I was happy enough with it.
When I booked the hotel I’d looked over some of the options they have there and booked a room at Mary-Ann’s polarrigg which is a barrack for workers rebuilt to be a kind of hotel. The room are VERY small, there are only toilets and showers to share in the halls (but there are more than enough), but they also had a huge living room where we could bring whatever we wanted to eat or drink, as well as a kitchen where we could prepare food. But of course the biggest selling point is that since all the rooms are so small, this is where everyone spends there time when they are at the hotel – and you can’t really stay there without getting to know someone.
The general feel of the city is very calm, all locals are strangely friendly and trusting compared to any place I’ve ever been before. The main things to do up there is of course outdoor activities, but you’ll never end up in a place like Svalbard without knowing that.
All in all a good trip, very remote and a nice way to spend my 2yrs anniversary for being in Antarctica – although it was really my brother’s 40yrs gift.
