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A log of Tom's recent journeys
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A log of Tom's recent journeys
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October 10, 2009
Fast-forward from September 30! Tom is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. No more ice; no more sunsets at 11 pm; no more 6 a.m. wake-up calls announcing that the outside temperature is a balmy 1 degree C and the wind is gusting to 28 knots; lots of trees with autumn foliage and not a sea-soaked Zodiac in sight. What has happened? He has journeyed south from 56 degrees North to 35 degrees North; that's what 21 degrees of latitude can do for the intrepid visitor to North America. Today, he attended the 2009 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest gathering of hot air balloons, anywhere on the Planet. Pilots from around the world come here to launch themselves and their gondola passengers on a lot of hot air. Within an hour of the "mass ascension" which begins at 7 a.m., the sky is filled with several hundred colorful and whimsically-shaped balloons rising slowly, to the wild cheers of grounded spectators. These are the brightly-colored Zodiacs of the Southwest morning sky. It is, they say, one of the most photographed events in the world.
September 30, 2009
For the first time in 53 days, Tom has seen a living tree and made a point of having himself photographed next to it. He is in the hamlet of Hopedale (pop. 620), on Labrador's north coast. He is filing this report from the Amos Comenius Memorial School, courtesy of School Secretary Nancy Barfoot. The school's 130 students attend a kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum in a modern building built in 2004. In 1782, Moravian Christian missionaries arrived here to convert the Inuit living in this sttlement of Agvituk.
September 26, 2009
Captain Kent Granquist has brought the M/S Clipper Adventurer to the anchorage point for Kuujjuaq, Nunavik's largest community (pop. 2,250), by sailing upstream into the Koksoak River. Passengers on this part of the voyage disembarked and flew home, while a new group took their place and boarded the ship to begin the next leg of the journey. Tom remained on the ship to begin the 5th and final voyage of his 5-stage journey across the Arctic and Canada's Far North. The region of Nunavik stretches north of the 55th parallel and occupies a third of the province of Quebec. Nunavik is accessible only by air and ship; there are no roads in this region the size of France. The 11,000 Inuit that reside in Nunavik's 14 villages---almost all located on the coasts of Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay---have a rich culture and history related to hunting and fishing, although their present economic life is more diversified.
On September 23, Tom visited the Baffin Island hamlet of Cape Dorset (pop. 1,237), known also by its Inuktitut name of Kinngait. It was here, in 1959, that visiting artist, the late James Houston, identified gifted Inuit artists and introduced print-making to them. He also brought Inuit print-making and stone carving to the world's attention. This October, marks the 50th anniversary of Cape Dorset's famed Kinngait Studios and, today, 22 percent of Cape Dorset's population are employed in carving and graphic arts. At a celebration marking this milestone, the ship's adventurers hosted the locals, at their visitor center, with a barbecue prepared by the ship's crew. After two pairs of Inuit throat singers had performed for the visitors, Houston's son, John, danced with 80-year-old Kenojuak Ashevak, the doyenne of Cape Dorset print makers, whose world-renown, black-and-red art print, "The Enchanted Owl" (1960), is so symbolic of this art genre.
After Cape Dorset, a landing was made, the following day, at the hamlet of Kangiqsujuaq (61deg 36'N, 71deg 58'W and known formerly as Wakeham Bay), on the north shore of Nunavik, in northern Quebec.
September 22, 2009
Tom is ashore at Kimmirut, on Meta Incognita Peninsula, at the southern tip of Baffin Island. Previously known as Lake Harbour, Kimmirut is a community of about 425, thriving on stone carving, sculptures and jewellery-making, thanks to an abundance of unusual gemstones and minerals in this region. Tom is updating this log at the 140-student Qaqqalik elementary and high school, courtesy of high school graduate, Monica Gardner, and Vice-Principal Edward Flynn.
September 21, 2009
The ship anchored at tiny and remote Monumental Island, off the coast of the Hall Peninsula along the southeast coast of Baffin Island, Canada's largest island. Here, a circumnavigation of the rocky island was made by zodiac, and two polar bears were spotted and photographed climbing up the bare, rocky face, apparently foraging on the sparse cover of moss that might have supplied a little food, so late in the season.
September 20, 2009
Tom has crossed Davis Strait and, with the ship anchored nearby, a visit was made to the hamlet of Pangnirtung, in Cumberland Sound on Baffin Island. Pangnirtung (pop. 1,700) is at the mouth of a winding river valley which has spectacular, snow-covered mountains behind it. The community was a center for commercial whaling during the 1800s, but today is known for its art (particularly woven tapestries and art prints) and has an Inuit Arts Centre, museum and visitor center.
September 18, 2009
Tom is back in the Greenland iceberg nursery of Ilulissat (for the third time). It is snowing lightly, as winter slowly returns to the Arctic. These icebergs have calved off the northern hemisphere's most "productive" glacier, Sermeq Kujalleq, at the rate of 18-20 million tonnes of ice, per day. And the glacier itself creeps forward at 7 km per year. Later in the day, the ship will leave the world's biggest island (which belongs to Denmark) and, once again, head across the Davis Strait---going south, past the Arctic Circle, and toward the southern shores of Baffin Island. Young Greenlanders are bilingual and speak their native Greenlandic as well as Danish.
September 17, 2009
Tom is in the town of Sisimiut (pop. 5,000), on the west coast of Greenland, 75 km north of the Arctic Circle. He is using the town's library to post this update on their computer. To this sensory-deprived high-Arctic traveler, Sisimiut is astonishingly prosperous and busy. Fishing, tourism, small business, and annual grants from the Danish government seem to energize this community. Cranes are constantly offloading containers from supply ships; trucks, cars, and transit buses zoom around the paved roads; privately owned motor yachts are moored in the harbor; and the brightly-colored houses, office buildings, and shops are evidence that the townspeople---whose ancestors arrived in this region 4,500 years ago and lived on fish, birds and sea mammals---have taken their ice-free Arctic surroundings and shown the world what can be done even when you live 67 degrees north of the Equator.
September 16, 2009
The ship has arrived in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland coast. Tom stays on for the next voyage, while the remaining passengers leave the ship to fly home and a new group arrives aboard the ship. This town lies at the very end of one of the world's longest fiords (168 km), Sondre Stromfjord (also known as Kangerlussuaq Fjord), and is Greenland's main international and domestic airport (thanks to a U.S. military air base built here in WWII, but closed in 1992). Kangerlussuaq is surrounded by ancient rocks filled with intrusions and created under enormous pressure (7,000 atmospheres). At the source of the fiord, massive amounts of silt (coming from glacier-eroded rocks, further upstream) plough into this body of water, at the rate of 80,000 tonnes per day, during the summer. While waiting for their delayed flight, most of the adventurers spent time at a glacial lake, explored the surrounding tundra and waterfall, then hiked the 3 km back to the airport.
Yesterday, a visit was made to the tiny hamlet of Itilleq, or Itivdleq (population: 110), on the west Greenland coast, at the mouth of the Itilleq Fjord. Here, the ship's soccer team came ashore---with Nunavut and Canadian flags flying---to challenge the hamlet's soccer team in a friendly match. The brave visiting team, spurred on by the ship's costumed cheerleaders, went down 3 goals to 14, and the "Adventure Canada Polar Pennant 2009" trophy was presented to the proud Greenland team.
About 65 of Itilleq's denizens were then taken by zodiac to the anchored ship and were treated to refreshments and music from the ship's staff, with the passengers singing to them in their Inuktitut language. Earlier in the day, fresh, raw seal meat was brought aboard and the adventurers had a chance to sample raw seal heart and muscle, raw seal blubber, and air-dried minke whale meat.
September 14, 2009
Tom has crossed Davis Strait to the west coast of Greenland, visiting the town of ILULISSAT (formerly known as Jakobshavn). It is one of the largest towns visited, thus far, on his 3-voyage odyssey north of the Arctic Circle. And it is now 37 days since he last saw a living tree. There is no question that sensory deprivation is a major factor in the lives of Arctic long-timers. Ilulissat's nearly 5,000 residents have done something about it by painting their houses in bright colors, and holding onto tradition by keeping 6,000 noisy sled dogs. The town also boasts one of the world's most fluid glaciers, which creeps forward at an astonishing 19 meters a day and calves roughly 35 cubic kilometers of ice, each year, into Disko Bay, thus supplying it with lots of spectacular icebergs. This latter fact has earned the Ilulissat ice fjord a place on UNESCO's World Heritage List.
With no shore landings on the program, the day spent crossing Davis Strait from Baffin Island to Greenland was far from inactive. Fewer lectures were scheduled and the ship sprung alive as rarely before---filling the time with a costumed "dancercise" (a colorful sweatshop, fuelled with loud music and bottled-barley cheer), workshops, a bazaar, concert, and contest. Tom finished off the long day by descending into the bowels of the ship and joining the ship's crew for an ear-shattering night of disco dancing in their staff dining room.
September 12, 2009
The cancelled Pond Inlet landing was substituted, early next morning, with a site that exceeded the wildest expectations of a seasoned adventure traveler. Suddenly, Baffin Island threw up its towering, snow-covered mountains, steeped them in deep fiords fed by broad-shouldered glaciers , and offered the gentlest of Zodiac landing sites on secretive, Refuge Harbour, nestled deep inside Scott Inlet. Even the, normally staid, Daily Program posted on board the ship gushed with vivid descriptives: "This visually rich region is virtually unknown to modern travellers. . ."
So, it was no surprise that 94-year-old Ottawa resident, Jane Stevens, found herself being Zodiaced from the ship, across the tiny bay, to a delightfully quiet and windless spot on an ancient Arctic beach. And enjoy it she did. This was Canada's Far North in the best of moods, showing off the splendor of its hidden recesses to those who discover them the hard way.
September 11, 2009
Tom and shipmates were scheduled to make a landing at the hamlet of Pond Inlet (pop. 1,400), at the northern end of Baffin Island. Weather conditions were so rough that the planned landing by Zodiac was cancelled.
Here's a summary of the places visited, since the last log. After Kugluktuk, he sailed to Cape Baring, on the Wollaston Peninsula of Victoria Island, at the entrance of Prince Albert Sound, the ship arriving on September 3. This was his first landing in Canada's Northwest Territories. Victoria Is. is the world's eighth largest island (Canada's second largest) and its 217,291 square kilometers make it larger than Great Britain. Tom went off and explored the river canyon upriver from the landing site, observing the ancient layers of sedimentary rocks in this gorge (limestone, mudstone, and siltstone) and absorbing the absolute stillness in this slice of the Planet.
Next morning, a landing was made at De Salis Bay, on Banks Island, Northwest Territories. A long hike inland, in search of musk ox herds, failed to locate the shy animals feeding on the tundra, and always on the move. Having reached the Amundsen Gulf at the entrance to the Beaufort Sea, this was Tom's furthest-west foray in his 2-month journey through Canada's Far North. Here, the original plan was for the ship to sail north, through the Prince of Wales Strait, into Viscount Melville Sound, and to make a landing on Melville Island. But the sea-ice charts received from Environment Canada's Radarsat-2 showed that Viscount Melville Sound and the Parry Channel were clogged with 80 percent to 100 percent sea-ice cover.
Since this ship is an ice-strengthened vessel, with an Ice Class rating of A-1 (but not a true icebreaker), the decision was made not to proceed further north, but to turn around and head back into Dolphin and Union Strait, stopping briefly at Lady Franklin Point, before sailing into Bathurst Inlet and anchoring next morning in tiny, picturesque Baychimo Harbour. This small, traditional Inuit community of Umingmaktok (population 20, during summer months, and declining to about 6 in winter) feeds and clothes itself almost exclusively from the surrounding tundra and sea. Upon coming ashore, there was only one resident present--she was the 85-year-old elder of the community--the others having gone hunting for arctic fox and musk ox, or fishing for Arctic char.
A day-and-a-half later, the ship anchored off Jenny Lind Island in Queen Maud Gulf, and the party went ashore for a long hike, over soggy tundra moss and sand, to spot snow owls, arctic swans, snow geese and glaucous gulls. On September 8, a landing was made at Pasley Bay on Boothia Peninsula (70deg 35.31'N; 96deg 01.35'W). This is where the North Magnetic Pole was located, back in 1902. The North Magnetic Pole is where all magnetic compasses point because it marks the northern end of the Earth's magnetic field. This Pole is not stationary, but constantly moving northward over the Earth's surface. By 2009, the North Magnetic Pole had drifted northward to its present location--roughly 84N, 120W--and is now over the Arctic Ocean, and edging closer to the Geographic North Pole. At Pasley Bay, a large stone cairn marks the spot where, in 1831, Scottish explorer James Clark Ross claimed to have located the Magnetic North Pole.
The next day (09.09.09), Tom sailed, for the third time, through the very narrow Bellot Strait, a 32-kilometer passage separating Boothia Peninsula from Somerset Island, and went ashore at Fort Ross (eastern end of Bellot Strait). Here stands an abandoned Hudson's Bay Company trading post, last used in 1948. At 0 degrees C, with a 30-knot wind to liven things up, this was one of his coldest landings---a miserable place to be, even in the Arctic summer.
The weather on Day 10.09.09 turned out to be even worse. Making his third landing, within 20 days, at Beechey Island, taught Tom how quickly Arctic landing sites can change in three weeks. Winter was setting in and fresh snow lay on the ground. When the ship anchored in Erebus Bay, the ship's thermometer was showing -1 deg C and the landing adventurers had steeled themselves to their forthcoming Arctic ordeal by dressing up to the teeth. They had already been primed for this historic landing site by first watching a 27-minute documentary film on the 1984 exhumation of the frozen bodies of two of Sir John Franklin's young crew members, buried in 1845 on Beechey Island, in order to discover what killed them (and possibly also all 129 members of the ill-fated Franklin expedition which had sailed from England in search of the Northwest Passage and mysteriously disappeared).
Perfectly preserved, for 139 years, in the permafrost under their grave markers, their skin, flesh, hair, nails and internal organs allowed the forensic archaeologists to determine the probable cause of death. The film's verdict: lead poisoning from badly sealed tin cans that allowed lead metal to come into contact with the canned food eaten by the crew. Toward the end of this chilly excursion on Beechey, the sea was being whipped up by winds gusting to 51 knots. It was a rough and tricky Zodiac ride back to the waiting ship.
September 2, 2009
Tom left Cambridge Bay yesterday evening and, 24 hours later, he is back at the hamlet of Kugluktuk (population: 1,300 and formerly known as Coppermine) at the mouth of the Coppermine River. He is sitting at a computer in Kugluktuk High School, surrounded by computer-busy students, e-mailing, chatting with friends on Facebook, and writing their assignments using Google sources. The sky is clear, the sun at 27 degrees above the horizon, and the bay somewhat choppy from a 20-knot breeze. The last time the local townsfolk saw tourists landing off a ship and visiting their hamlet was 1997. The students Tom talked to about this fact, said "You'd have to ask my parents." The school, Grades 7 to 12, has about 160 students. Tom wandered through the library area and found a wall covered with engraved plaques honoring student achievements. One that caught his eye was a plaque honoring Senior High students who earned top honors in mathematics; the 2008-2009 winner was Mahik Havioyak, a 17-year-old Inuit girl who has lived in Kugluktuk all her life. Tonight, the ship leaves to continue her westward journey through Coronation Gulf and into the Beaufort Sea. See you there!
September 1, 2009
Tom is in Cambridge Bay (population: 1,600), on the southern shores of Victoria Island in Nunavut Territory. At 9 a.m., the expedition ship docked at the small supply-ship port and the group leaving the ship was taken to the airport to fly home, while a fresh group of adventurers to arrive by air from Ottawa and Edmonton was awaited. Tom continues his 5-voyage journey across the Arctic on the same ship and is taking advantage of Internet facilities at the Cambridge Bay Library & Heritage Centre before the ship departs and resumes its state of no connectivity with the outside world.
After Gjoa Haven, his ship continued westward through the Northwest Passage and, on August 26, a Zodiac landing was made on Jenny Lind Island in Queen Maud Gulf (named by explorer Roald Amundsen in 1905 for Queen Maud of Norway). The following day, the ship anchored in Johansen Bay (off the Richardson Islands) and a Zodiac landing was made on the southern shores of Victoria Island. After weeks of seeing bare rock, grey seas and white glacial ice, Tom's hike into this part of Nunavut was a feast for the eyes. Suddenly there was color in the Arctic tundra: mountain meadows and ridges carpeted in wild blueberry, bearberry, arctic willow, dwarf birch, mountain sorrel, Labrador tea, white mountain heather, sunburst lichen, map lichen and cottongrass.
On August 28, the ship sailed through Dolphin and Union Strait and a landing was made near Clifton Point, just east of the Inman River, touching for the first time the Canadian mainland. The ship then turned around and headed back through the Northwest Passage, next day reaching the community of Kugluktuk (formerly Coppermine) at the mouth of the Coppermine River. Here, the ship's Zodiacs formed a convoy of 10 dinghies and Tom and his shipmates headed 18.5 km upstream into the Coppermine River, going ashore and hiking 3 km to Bloody Falls. These rapids are the site of the Bloody Falls Massacre of 1771 (Beethoven was one year old then), when Chipewyan warriors ambushed and killed the local Inuit living there. After resting at Bloody Falls, the group hiked back to the Zodiacs and traveled down the Coppermine River to rejoin the ship.
August 30 was spent going ashore at Bathurst Inlet (66 deg 50.2 min North, 107 deg 58.6 min West). The hillsides were carpeted in soft moss and Arctic tundra in bright red, orange and yellow vegetation, in colors reminiscent of the fall foliage of North America's desiduous forests. On August 31, after moving to Arctic Sound and anchoring in Baillie Bay, the party went ashore to observe grizzly bears feeding on the plentiful berries and fattening up for the winter season. As with every landing in the High Arctic (because this is polar bear and grizzly territory), several of the naturalist staff from the ship came ashore with guns and took positions atop ridges to watch for any signs of danger from bears. This time, the precaution paid off. One adult grizzly, catching the scent of the visitors on its feeding grounds, advanced menacingly toward a group taking photographs. The expedition leader used his shotgun, firing two warning flare shots toward the grizzly, and was able to make it flee across the tundra and away from the unarmed Zodiac drivers down on the beach.
August 25, 2009
Tom is in the Nunavut hamlet of Gjoa Haven (68 deg 30 min North; population: 1,200), on King William Island, inside the Northwest Passage. While he is aboard the m.v. Clipper Adventurer, communication with the outside world is virtually nonexistent (a sad state for a supposedly modern ship in the 21st century), so Tom relies on the kindness of locals, whenever he can get ashore at some remote hamlet in Canada's Far North to let his family and friends know that he is still alive. Today, High School Principal Paul Cipriano's office staff kindly let Tom use one of the computers in his offices to gain access to the Internet. Qiqirtaq Ilihakvik High School has about 200 students in Grades 7 to 12. Gjoa Haven has a community and social services centre, an aged-care centre, a municipal office, co-operative store, auditorium for public gatherings, several large satellite dishes pointed to the southern horizon, and the 30-room Amundsen Hotel.
While searching for the Northwest Passage in 1903, Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, stopped at a natural harbor on the island's south coast and named it Gjoa Haven (after his ship "Gjoa"), calling it "the finest little harbour in the world." Unable to continue further, due to sea ice, Amundsen spent 22 months on and around this island, learning valuable Arctic survival skills from the native Inuit (which later proved so useful when he went by dog sledge to the South Pole in 1911). He finally was able to free the icebound ship and sail away in August 1905 to complete his discovery, thereby becoming the first to navigate the infamous Northwest Passage which had eluded explorers for 400 years and taken a terrible toll in lives on the many expeditions to find it.
After leaving Grise Fiord on August 18, Tom's ship crossed Jones Sound and they made a Zodiac landing at Cape Hardy, on the north shore of Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island on Earth. And a desolate island this is: 55,247 square kilometers of barren emptiness! And while you are thinking about that, get your head around this fast fact: Nunavut Territory, which Tom and his 89 shipmates are exploring for themselves throughout this part of Canada's Far North, is eight times the size of the United Kingdom; yet, Nunavut's entire population would fill less than half the seats in a modern baseball or soccer stadium. Rounding the east coast of Devon Island, they made a landing at Philpot Island, where the first herd of muskox was sighted. Later that day, a Zodiac landing was made at Dundas Harbour, with a 2-hour hike across mossy tundra, to an abandoned Royal Canadian Mounted Police post and its tiny cemetery---a ghostly scene where, in 1926 and 1927, one RCMP constable had committed suicide and another had accidentally shot himself dead.
The following day, a Zodiac cruise was made along the extraordinary, 100-meter-high cliffs of Prince Leopold Island, where a quarter-million birds (principally, thick-billed murres and black-legged kittiwakes) were nesting on the vertical cliff's ledges. Later that day, Zodiac landings were made on Beechey Island, one of the most important historic sites in the Arctic. The marked graves of three seamen from John Franklin's 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage are on the island's beach head. Franklin died and his ships, "Erebus" and "Terror", along with all 129 men on his expedition, disappeared without a trace. Today, 150 years later, various attempts to discover their fate are still continuing.
The following day, the ship anchored at the hamlet of Resolute, on Cornwallis Island and, all but a handful, of expeditioners left the ship to return home by airplane, while a fresh group of 80 travellers boarded the "Clipper Adventurer" to journey into the Northwest Passage. Tom paid a second visit to Beechey Island, then on August 23, he and his shipmates sailed down Peel Sound to enter the Northwest Passage and sail through Bellot Strait, along the way passing Point Zenith, the northernmost tip of the continental landmass of North America. At the eastern end of Bellot Strait, an evening landing was made at Fort Ross, the last trading post built by the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada's Arctic, in 1937. The manager's house and a store are severely weatherbeaten but still standing, having been abandoned in 1948. The 32-kilometer passage down Bellot Strait offered sightings of polar bear, narwhals, and a fin whale.
Continuing south through the Northwest Passage, the following 36 hours were spent sailing through fog and sea ice, going through Franklin Strait, the narrow James Ross Strait, the St. Roch Basin, and the Rae Strait so as to anchor at Gjoa Haven.
August 18, 2009
Tom is in Grise Fiord, Nunavut, Canada's most northerly hamlet at 76 degrees 24 minutes North, on the southern shores of Ellesmere Island. Tiny Grise Fiord has a population of 145, but it is surprisingly well connected to the world to the south, and has a co-operative store, a school (kindergarten to Grade 12), a 2-storey hotel, a gymnasium for public shows and events, and an air strip for Twin Otter aircraft. School Principal, Lee Wood, kindly let Tom use one of his office computers to post this log of the journey across Canada's Far North.
To get here from Qaanaaq, Greenland, he sailed to Cape Alexander, in Smith Sound, where the group made a landing by Zodiac inflatable dinghy, while the ship was anchored at tiny Sutherland Island. After reaching the furthest north on this voyage (78 deg. 12 min. N), the ship headed south to Coburg Island in Canada's Nunavut and entered Grise Fiord harbor this morning to go through Canadian customs clearance.
August 15, 2009
Tom is in Qaanaaq, Greenland (also known as Thule), Greenland's northernmost community and the world's northernmost town. It lies at 77 degrees 30 minutes North and has 600 inhabitants. He sailed here after landing at rarely-visited Bjorlings Oya, one of the tiny Carey Islands in Smith Sound. Before that, he was in Cape York, where he and his fellow travelers made landings in both places. The soccer match in Upernavik, two days earlier, was a great success with the locals; the boys from Upernavik beating the ship's soccer squad 7-3. The Upernavik team was presented with the "The Adventure Canada 2009 Polar Cup" by the visiting team and then were invited to lunch on board the ship, before it sailed off to Cape York.
August 13, 2009
Tom is in Upernavik, on the west coast of Greenland, at about 73 degrees North. His ship has docked to take on fresh water, so he and his fellow travelers have a half day to explore this very remote village of 1,500 Greenlanders. Later in the morning, he and a team of 10 others from the ship will play a soccer match against the Upernavik team. Yesterday, they explored Karrats Fjord in perfectly clear, sunny weather and had a barbecue lunch on the open deck of the Clipper Adventurer, while surrounded by icebergs and high mountains. After arriving in Kangerlussuaq on August 9, he traveled through Kangerlussuaq Fjord (one of Greenland's longest fjords), a 12-hour passage into the open ocean of Davis Strait. The next landing was at the bay of Faeringe Nordhaven (Kangiussaq) where the group trekked along a glacier valley filled with mosquitoes and midges. The following morning, they landed at the town of Ilulissat (Jakobshavn), and hiked into the UNESCO World Heritage ice fjord at the end of the settlement.
August 8, 2009
Tom is in Montreal, bidding his wife goodbye for the next two months and preparing to fly to Ottawa today, in order to take a charter flight to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to begin his 2-month voyage across Canada's Far North.
From Australia, he and his wife flew to Los Angeles to spend a few days with Tom's longtime friend, Vahik Aghamalian, from their Iran days in the 1960s. He also met former travel companions, David and Aiko Fadness, who had come to Los Angeles to meet them. After LA, they flew to Vancouver to spend time with Tom's British Columbian family. Tom and his wife then went on to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory to explore a little of the Alaska Highway, by car, up to Burwash Landing on Kluane Lake and the, now abandoned, Kluane Wilderness Village in Kluane National Park. A day trip to Takhini Hot Springs completed their experience of the legendary Yukon, before they flew to Montreal.
July 15, 2009
Tom is at home in Gold Coast, Australia, preparing for his next planetary foray---a 3-month journey
which includes 2 months in Canada's Far North. Starting with a visit to British Columbia and the
Yukon Territory, in late-July, he will later join the 118-passenger m.v. Clipper Adventurer for five
separate voyages that plan to take in Greenland, Ellesmere Island, Cornwallis Island, Devon Island,
the Northwest Passage, Victoria Island, Banks Island, Melville Island, Baffin Island, Northern Quebec,
Newfoundland and Labrador, St.-Pierre & Miquelon, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Fast-forward from September 30! Tom is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. No more ice; no more sunsets at 11 pm; no more 6 a.m. wake-up calls announcing that the outside temperature is a balmy 1 degree C and the wind is gusting to 28 knots; lots of trees with autumn foliage and not a sea-soaked Zodiac in sight. What has happened? He has journeyed south from 56 degrees North to 35 degrees North; that's what 21 degrees of latitude can do for the intrepid visitor to North America. Today, he attended the 2009 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest gathering of hot air balloons, anywhere on the Planet. Pilots from around the world come here to launch themselves and their gondola passengers on a lot of hot air. Within an hour of the "mass ascension" which begins at 7 a.m., the sky is filled with several hundred colorful and whimsically-shaped balloons rising slowly, to the wild cheers of grounded spectators. These are the brightly-colored Zodiacs of the Southwest morning sky. It is, they say, one of the most photographed events in the world.
September 30, 2009
For the first time in 53 days, Tom has seen a living tree and made a point of having himself photographed next to it. He is in the hamlet of Hopedale (pop. 620), on Labrador's north coast. He is filing this report from the Amos Comenius Memorial School, courtesy of School Secretary Nancy Barfoot. The school's 130 students attend a kindergarten to Grade 12 curriculum in a modern building built in 2004. In 1782, Moravian Christian missionaries arrived here to convert the Inuit living in this sttlement of Agvituk.
September 26, 2009
Captain Kent Granquist has brought the M/S Clipper Adventurer to the anchorage point for Kuujjuaq, Nunavik's largest community (pop. 2,250), by sailing upstream into the Koksoak River. Passengers on this part of the voyage disembarked and flew home, while a new group took their place and boarded the ship to begin the next leg of the journey. Tom remained on the ship to begin the 5th and final voyage of his 5-stage journey across the Arctic and Canada's Far North. The region of Nunavik stretches north of the 55th parallel and occupies a third of the province of Quebec. Nunavik is accessible only by air and ship; there are no roads in this region the size of France. The 11,000 Inuit that reside in Nunavik's 14 villages---almost all located on the coasts of Hudson Bay and Ungava Bay---have a rich culture and history related to hunting and fishing, although their present economic life is more diversified.
On September 23, Tom visited the Baffin Island hamlet of Cape Dorset (pop. 1,237), known also by its Inuktitut name of Kinngait. It was here, in 1959, that visiting artist, the late James Houston, identified gifted Inuit artists and introduced print-making to them. He also brought Inuit print-making and stone carving to the world's attention. This October, marks the 50th anniversary of Cape Dorset's famed Kinngait Studios and, today, 22 percent of Cape Dorset's population are employed in carving and graphic arts. At a celebration marking this milestone, the ship's adventurers hosted the locals, at their visitor center, with a barbecue prepared by the ship's crew. After two pairs of Inuit throat singers had performed for the visitors, Houston's son, John, danced with 80-year-old Kenojuak Ashevak, the doyenne of Cape Dorset print makers, whose world-renown, black-and-red art print, "The Enchanted Owl" (1960), is so symbolic of this art genre.
After Cape Dorset, a landing was made, the following day, at the hamlet of Kangiqsujuaq (61deg 36'N, 71deg 58'W and known formerly as Wakeham Bay), on the north shore of Nunavik, in northern Quebec.
September 22, 2009
Tom is ashore at Kimmirut, on Meta Incognita Peninsula, at the southern tip of Baffin Island. Previously known as Lake Harbour, Kimmirut is a community of about 425, thriving on stone carving, sculptures and jewellery-making, thanks to an abundance of unusual gemstones and minerals in this region. Tom is updating this log at the 140-student Qaqqalik elementary and high school, courtesy of high school graduate, Monica Gardner, and Vice-Principal Edward Flynn.
September 21, 2009
The ship anchored at tiny and remote Monumental Island, off the coast of the Hall Peninsula along the southeast coast of Baffin Island, Canada's largest island. Here, a circumnavigation of the rocky island was made by zodiac, and two polar bears were spotted and photographed climbing up the bare, rocky face, apparently foraging on the sparse cover of moss that might have supplied a little food, so late in the season.
September 20, 2009
Tom has crossed Davis Strait and, with the ship anchored nearby, a visit was made to the hamlet of Pangnirtung, in Cumberland Sound on Baffin Island. Pangnirtung (pop. 1,700) is at the mouth of a winding river valley which has spectacular, snow-covered mountains behind it. The community was a center for commercial whaling during the 1800s, but today is known for its art (particularly woven tapestries and art prints) and has an Inuit Arts Centre, museum and visitor center.
September 18, 2009
Tom is back in the Greenland iceberg nursery of Ilulissat (for the third time). It is snowing lightly, as winter slowly returns to the Arctic. These icebergs have calved off the northern hemisphere's most "productive" glacier, Sermeq Kujalleq, at the rate of 18-20 million tonnes of ice, per day. And the glacier itself creeps forward at 7 km per year. Later in the day, the ship will leave the world's biggest island (which belongs to Denmark) and, once again, head across the Davis Strait---going south, past the Arctic Circle, and toward the southern shores of Baffin Island. Young Greenlanders are bilingual and speak their native Greenlandic as well as Danish.
September 17, 2009
Tom is in the town of Sisimiut (pop. 5,000), on the west coast of Greenland, 75 km north of the Arctic Circle. He is using the town's library to post this update on their computer. To this sensory-deprived high-Arctic traveler, Sisimiut is astonishingly prosperous and busy. Fishing, tourism, small business, and annual grants from the Danish government seem to energize this community. Cranes are constantly offloading containers from supply ships; trucks, cars, and transit buses zoom around the paved roads; privately owned motor yachts are moored in the harbor; and the brightly-colored houses, office buildings, and shops are evidence that the townspeople---whose ancestors arrived in this region 4,500 years ago and lived on fish, birds and sea mammals---have taken their ice-free Arctic surroundings and shown the world what can be done even when you live 67 degrees north of the Equator.
September 16, 2009
The ship has arrived in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland coast. Tom stays on for the next voyage, while the remaining passengers leave the ship to fly home and a new group arrives aboard the ship. This town lies at the very end of one of the world's longest fiords (168 km), Sondre Stromfjord (also known as Kangerlussuaq Fjord), and is Greenland's main international and domestic airport (thanks to a U.S. military air base built here in WWII, but closed in 1992). Kangerlussuaq is surrounded by ancient rocks filled with intrusions and created under enormous pressure (7,000 atmospheres). At the source of the fiord, massive amounts of silt (coming from glacier-eroded rocks, further upstream) plough into this body of water, at the rate of 80,000 tonnes per day, during the summer. While waiting for their delayed flight, most of the adventurers spent time at a glacial lake, explored the surrounding tundra and waterfall, then hiked the 3 km back to the airport.
Yesterday, a visit was made to the tiny hamlet of Itilleq, or Itivdleq (population: 110), on the west Greenland coast, at the mouth of the Itilleq Fjord. Here, the ship's soccer team came ashore---with Nunavut and Canadian flags flying---to challenge the hamlet's soccer team in a friendly match. The brave visiting team, spurred on by the ship's costumed cheerleaders, went down 3 goals to 14, and the "Adventure Canada Polar Pennant 2009" trophy was presented to the proud Greenland team.
About 65 of Itilleq's denizens were then taken by zodiac to the anchored ship and were treated to refreshments and music from the ship's staff, with the passengers singing to them in their Inuktitut language. Earlier in the day, fresh, raw seal meat was brought aboard and the adventurers had a chance to sample raw seal heart and muscle, raw seal blubber, and air-dried minke whale meat.
September 14, 2009
Tom has crossed Davis Strait to the west coast of Greenland, visiting the town of ILULISSAT (formerly known as Jakobshavn). It is one of the largest towns visited, thus far, on his 3-voyage odyssey north of the Arctic Circle. And it is now 37 days since he last saw a living tree. There is no question that sensory deprivation is a major factor in the lives of Arctic long-timers. Ilulissat's nearly 5,000 residents have done something about it by painting their houses in bright colors, and holding onto tradition by keeping 6,000 noisy sled dogs. The town also boasts one of the world's most fluid glaciers, which creeps forward at an astonishing 19 meters a day and calves roughly 35 cubic kilometers of ice, each year, into Disko Bay, thus supplying it with lots of spectacular icebergs. This latter fact has earned the Ilulissat ice fjord a place on UNESCO's World Heritage List.
With no shore landings on the program, the day spent crossing Davis Strait from Baffin Island to Greenland was far from inactive. Fewer lectures were scheduled and the ship sprung alive as rarely before---filling the time with a costumed "dancercise" (a colorful sweatshop, fuelled with loud music and bottled-barley cheer), workshops, a bazaar, concert, and contest. Tom finished off the long day by descending into the bowels of the ship and joining the ship's crew for an ear-shattering night of disco dancing in their staff dining room.
September 12, 2009
The cancelled Pond Inlet landing was substituted, early next morning, with a site that exceeded the wildest expectations of a seasoned adventure traveler. Suddenly, Baffin Island threw up its towering, snow-covered mountains, steeped them in deep fiords fed by broad-shouldered glaciers , and offered the gentlest of Zodiac landing sites on secretive, Refuge Harbour, nestled deep inside Scott Inlet. Even the, normally staid, Daily Program posted on board the ship gushed with vivid descriptives: "This visually rich region is virtually unknown to modern travellers. . ."
So, it was no surprise that 94-year-old Ottawa resident, Jane Stevens, found herself being Zodiaced from the ship, across the tiny bay, to a delightfully quiet and windless spot on an ancient Arctic beach. And enjoy it she did. This was Canada's Far North in the best of moods, showing off the splendor of its hidden recesses to those who discover them the hard way.
September 11, 2009
Tom and shipmates were scheduled to make a landing at the hamlet of Pond Inlet (pop. 1,400), at the northern end of Baffin Island. Weather conditions were so rough that the planned landing by Zodiac was cancelled.
Here's a summary of the places visited, since the last log. After Kugluktuk, he sailed to Cape Baring, on the Wollaston Peninsula of Victoria Island, at the entrance of Prince Albert Sound, the ship arriving on September 3. This was his first landing in Canada's Northwest Territories. Victoria Is. is the world's eighth largest island (Canada's second largest) and its 217,291 square kilometers make it larger than Great Britain. Tom went off and explored the river canyon upriver from the landing site, observing the ancient layers of sedimentary rocks in this gorge (limestone, mudstone, and siltstone) and absorbing the absolute stillness in this slice of the Planet.
Next morning, a landing was made at De Salis Bay, on Banks Island, Northwest Territories. A long hike inland, in search of musk ox herds, failed to locate the shy animals feeding on the tundra, and always on the move. Having reached the Amundsen Gulf at the entrance to the Beaufort Sea, this was Tom's furthest-west foray in his 2-month journey through Canada's Far North. Here, the original plan was for the ship to sail north, through the Prince of Wales Strait, into Viscount Melville Sound, and to make a landing on Melville Island. But the sea-ice charts received from Environment Canada's Radarsat-2 showed that Viscount Melville Sound and the Parry Channel were clogged with 80 percent to 100 percent sea-ice cover.
Since this ship is an ice-strengthened vessel, with an Ice Class rating of A-1 (but not a true icebreaker), the decision was made not to proceed further north, but to turn around and head back into Dolphin and Union Strait, stopping briefly at Lady Franklin Point, before sailing into Bathurst Inlet and anchoring next morning in tiny, picturesque Baychimo Harbour. This small, traditional Inuit community of Umingmaktok (population 20, during summer months, and declining to about 6 in winter) feeds and clothes itself almost exclusively from the surrounding tundra and sea. Upon coming ashore, there was only one resident present--she was the 85-year-old elder of the community--the others having gone hunting for arctic fox and musk ox, or fishing for Arctic char.
A day-and-a-half later, the ship anchored off Jenny Lind Island in Queen Maud Gulf, and the party went ashore for a long hike, over soggy tundra moss and sand, to spot snow owls, arctic swans, snow geese and glaucous gulls. On September 8, a landing was made at Pasley Bay on Boothia Peninsula (70deg 35.31'N; 96deg 01.35'W). This is where the North Magnetic Pole was located, back in 1902. The North Magnetic Pole is where all magnetic compasses point because it marks the northern end of the Earth's magnetic field. This Pole is not stationary, but constantly moving northward over the Earth's surface. By 2009, the North Magnetic Pole had drifted northward to its present location--roughly 84N, 120W--and is now over the Arctic Ocean, and edging closer to the Geographic North Pole. At Pasley Bay, a large stone cairn marks the spot where, in 1831, Scottish explorer James Clark Ross claimed to have located the Magnetic North Pole.
The next day (09.09.09), Tom sailed, for the third time, through the very narrow Bellot Strait, a 32-kilometer passage separating Boothia Peninsula from Somerset Island, and went ashore at Fort Ross (eastern end of Bellot Strait). Here stands an abandoned Hudson's Bay Company trading post, last used in 1948. At 0 degrees C, with a 30-knot wind to liven things up, this was one of his coldest landings---a miserable place to be, even in the Arctic summer.
The weather on Day 10.09.09 turned out to be even worse. Making his third landing, within 20 days, at Beechey Island, taught Tom how quickly Arctic landing sites can change in three weeks. Winter was setting in and fresh snow lay on the ground. When the ship anchored in Erebus Bay, the ship's thermometer was showing -1 deg C and the landing adventurers had steeled themselves to their forthcoming Arctic ordeal by dressing up to the teeth. They had already been primed for this historic landing site by first watching a 27-minute documentary film on the 1984 exhumation of the frozen bodies of two of Sir John Franklin's young crew members, buried in 1845 on Beechey Island, in order to discover what killed them (and possibly also all 129 members of the ill-fated Franklin expedition which had sailed from England in search of the Northwest Passage and mysteriously disappeared).
Perfectly preserved, for 139 years, in the permafrost under their grave markers, their skin, flesh, hair, nails and internal organs allowed the forensic archaeologists to determine the probable cause of death. The film's verdict: lead poisoning from badly sealed tin cans that allowed lead metal to come into contact with the canned food eaten by the crew. Toward the end of this chilly excursion on Beechey, the sea was being whipped up by winds gusting to 51 knots. It was a rough and tricky Zodiac ride back to the waiting ship.
September 2, 2009
Tom left Cambridge Bay yesterday evening and, 24 hours later, he is back at the hamlet of Kugluktuk (population: 1,300 and formerly known as Coppermine) at the mouth of the Coppermine River. He is sitting at a computer in Kugluktuk High School, surrounded by computer-busy students, e-mailing, chatting with friends on Facebook, and writing their assignments using Google sources. The sky is clear, the sun at 27 degrees above the horizon, and the bay somewhat choppy from a 20-knot breeze. The last time the local townsfolk saw tourists landing off a ship and visiting their hamlet was 1997. The students Tom talked to about this fact, said "You'd have to ask my parents." The school, Grades 7 to 12, has about 160 students. Tom wandered through the library area and found a wall covered with engraved plaques honoring student achievements. One that caught his eye was a plaque honoring Senior High students who earned top honors in mathematics; the 2008-2009 winner was Mahik Havioyak, a 17-year-old Inuit girl who has lived in Kugluktuk all her life. Tonight, the ship leaves to continue her westward journey through Coronation Gulf and into the Beaufort Sea. See you there!
September 1, 2009
Tom is in Cambridge Bay (population: 1,600), on the southern shores of Victoria Island in Nunavut Territory. At 9 a.m., the expedition ship docked at the small supply-ship port and the group leaving the ship was taken to the airport to fly home, while a fresh group of adventurers to arrive by air from Ottawa and Edmonton was awaited. Tom continues his 5-voyage journey across the Arctic on the same ship and is taking advantage of Internet facilities at the Cambridge Bay Library & Heritage Centre before the ship departs and resumes its state of no connectivity with the outside world.
After Gjoa Haven, his ship continued westward through the Northwest Passage and, on August 26, a Zodiac landing was made on Jenny Lind Island in Queen Maud Gulf (named by explorer Roald Amundsen in 1905 for Queen Maud of Norway). The following day, the ship anchored in Johansen Bay (off the Richardson Islands) and a Zodiac landing was made on the southern shores of Victoria Island. After weeks of seeing bare rock, grey seas and white glacial ice, Tom's hike into this part of Nunavut was a feast for the eyes. Suddenly there was color in the Arctic tundra: mountain meadows and ridges carpeted in wild blueberry, bearberry, arctic willow, dwarf birch, mountain sorrel, Labrador tea, white mountain heather, sunburst lichen, map lichen and cottongrass.
On August 28, the ship sailed through Dolphin and Union Strait and a landing was made near Clifton Point, just east of the Inman River, touching for the first time the Canadian mainland. The ship then turned around and headed back through the Northwest Passage, next day reaching the community of Kugluktuk (formerly Coppermine) at the mouth of the Coppermine River. Here, the ship's Zodiacs formed a convoy of 10 dinghies and Tom and his shipmates headed 18.5 km upstream into the Coppermine River, going ashore and hiking 3 km to Bloody Falls. These rapids are the site of the Bloody Falls Massacre of 1771 (Beethoven was one year old then), when Chipewyan warriors ambushed and killed the local Inuit living there. After resting at Bloody Falls, the group hiked back to the Zodiacs and traveled down the Coppermine River to rejoin the ship.
August 30 was spent going ashore at Bathurst Inlet (66 deg 50.2 min North, 107 deg 58.6 min West). The hillsides were carpeted in soft moss and Arctic tundra in bright red, orange and yellow vegetation, in colors reminiscent of the fall foliage of North America's desiduous forests. On August 31, after moving to Arctic Sound and anchoring in Baillie Bay, the party went ashore to observe grizzly bears feeding on the plentiful berries and fattening up for the winter season. As with every landing in the High Arctic (because this is polar bear and grizzly territory), several of the naturalist staff from the ship came ashore with guns and took positions atop ridges to watch for any signs of danger from bears. This time, the precaution paid off. One adult grizzly, catching the scent of the visitors on its feeding grounds, advanced menacingly toward a group taking photographs. The expedition leader used his shotgun, firing two warning flare shots toward the grizzly, and was able to make it flee across the tundra and away from the unarmed Zodiac drivers down on the beach.
August 25, 2009
Tom is in the Nunavut hamlet of Gjoa Haven (68 deg 30 min North; population: 1,200), on King William Island, inside the Northwest Passage. While he is aboard the m.v. Clipper Adventurer, communication with the outside world is virtually nonexistent (a sad state for a supposedly modern ship in the 21st century), so Tom relies on the kindness of locals, whenever he can get ashore at some remote hamlet in Canada's Far North to let his family and friends know that he is still alive. Today, High School Principal Paul Cipriano's office staff kindly let Tom use one of the computers in his offices to gain access to the Internet. Qiqirtaq Ilihakvik High School has about 200 students in Grades 7 to 12. Gjoa Haven has a community and social services centre, an aged-care centre, a municipal office, co-operative store, auditorium for public gatherings, several large satellite dishes pointed to the southern horizon, and the 30-room Amundsen Hotel.
While searching for the Northwest Passage in 1903, Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen, stopped at a natural harbor on the island's south coast and named it Gjoa Haven (after his ship "Gjoa"), calling it "the finest little harbour in the world." Unable to continue further, due to sea ice, Amundsen spent 22 months on and around this island, learning valuable Arctic survival skills from the native Inuit (which later proved so useful when he went by dog sledge to the South Pole in 1911). He finally was able to free the icebound ship and sail away in August 1905 to complete his discovery, thereby becoming the first to navigate the infamous Northwest Passage which had eluded explorers for 400 years and taken a terrible toll in lives on the many expeditions to find it.
After leaving Grise Fiord on August 18, Tom's ship crossed Jones Sound and they made a Zodiac landing at Cape Hardy, on the north shore of Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island on Earth. And a desolate island this is: 55,247 square kilometers of barren emptiness! And while you are thinking about that, get your head around this fast fact: Nunavut Territory, which Tom and his 89 shipmates are exploring for themselves throughout this part of Canada's Far North, is eight times the size of the United Kingdom; yet, Nunavut's entire population would fill less than half the seats in a modern baseball or soccer stadium. Rounding the east coast of Devon Island, they made a landing at Philpot Island, where the first herd of muskox was sighted. Later that day, a Zodiac landing was made at Dundas Harbour, with a 2-hour hike across mossy tundra, to an abandoned Royal Canadian Mounted Police post and its tiny cemetery---a ghostly scene where, in 1926 and 1927, one RCMP constable had committed suicide and another had accidentally shot himself dead.
The following day, a Zodiac cruise was made along the extraordinary, 100-meter-high cliffs of Prince Leopold Island, where a quarter-million birds (principally, thick-billed murres and black-legged kittiwakes) were nesting on the vertical cliff's ledges. Later that day, Zodiac landings were made on Beechey Island, one of the most important historic sites in the Arctic. The marked graves of three seamen from John Franklin's 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage are on the island's beach head. Franklin died and his ships, "Erebus" and "Terror", along with all 129 men on his expedition, disappeared without a trace. Today, 150 years later, various attempts to discover their fate are still continuing.
The following day, the ship anchored at the hamlet of Resolute, on Cornwallis Island and, all but a handful, of expeditioners left the ship to return home by airplane, while a fresh group of 80 travellers boarded the "Clipper Adventurer" to journey into the Northwest Passage. Tom paid a second visit to Beechey Island, then on August 23, he and his shipmates sailed down Peel Sound to enter the Northwest Passage and sail through Bellot Strait, along the way passing Point Zenith, the northernmost tip of the continental landmass of North America. At the eastern end of Bellot Strait, an evening landing was made at Fort Ross, the last trading post built by the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada's Arctic, in 1937. The manager's house and a store are severely weatherbeaten but still standing, having been abandoned in 1948. The 32-kilometer passage down Bellot Strait offered sightings of polar bear, narwhals, and a fin whale.
Continuing south through the Northwest Passage, the following 36 hours were spent sailing through fog and sea ice, going through Franklin Strait, the narrow James Ross Strait, the St. Roch Basin, and the Rae Strait so as to anchor at Gjoa Haven.
August 18, 2009
Tom is in Grise Fiord, Nunavut, Canada's most northerly hamlet at 76 degrees 24 minutes North, on the southern shores of Ellesmere Island. Tiny Grise Fiord has a population of 145, but it is surprisingly well connected to the world to the south, and has a co-operative store, a school (kindergarten to Grade 12), a 2-storey hotel, a gymnasium for public shows and events, and an air strip for Twin Otter aircraft. School Principal, Lee Wood, kindly let Tom use one of his office computers to post this log of the journey across Canada's Far North.
To get here from Qaanaaq, Greenland, he sailed to Cape Alexander, in Smith Sound, where the group made a landing by Zodiac inflatable dinghy, while the ship was anchored at tiny Sutherland Island. After reaching the furthest north on this voyage (78 deg. 12 min. N), the ship headed south to Coburg Island in Canada's Nunavut and entered Grise Fiord harbor this morning to go through Canadian customs clearance.
August 15, 2009
Tom is in Qaanaaq, Greenland (also known as Thule), Greenland's northernmost community and the world's northernmost town. It lies at 77 degrees 30 minutes North and has 600 inhabitants. He sailed here after landing at rarely-visited Bjorlings Oya, one of the tiny Carey Islands in Smith Sound. Before that, he was in Cape York, where he and his fellow travelers made landings in both places. The soccer match in Upernavik, two days earlier, was a great success with the locals; the boys from Upernavik beating the ship's soccer squad 7-3. The Upernavik team was presented with the "The Adventure Canada 2009 Polar Cup" by the visiting team and then were invited to lunch on board the ship, before it sailed off to Cape York.
August 13, 2009
Tom is in Upernavik, on the west coast of Greenland, at about 73 degrees North. His ship has docked to take on fresh water, so he and his fellow travelers have a half day to explore this very remote village of 1,500 Greenlanders. Later in the morning, he and a team of 10 others from the ship will play a soccer match against the Upernavik team. Yesterday, they explored Karrats Fjord in perfectly clear, sunny weather and had a barbecue lunch on the open deck of the Clipper Adventurer, while surrounded by icebergs and high mountains. After arriving in Kangerlussuaq on August 9, he traveled through Kangerlussuaq Fjord (one of Greenland's longest fjords), a 12-hour passage into the open ocean of Davis Strait. The next landing was at the bay of Faeringe Nordhaven (Kangiussaq) where the group trekked along a glacier valley filled with mosquitoes and midges. The following morning, they landed at the town of Ilulissat (Jakobshavn), and hiked into the UNESCO World Heritage ice fjord at the end of the settlement.
August 8, 2009
Tom is in Montreal, bidding his wife goodbye for the next two months and preparing to fly to Ottawa today, in order to take a charter flight to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to begin his 2-month voyage across Canada's Far North.
From Australia, he and his wife flew to Los Angeles to spend a few days with Tom's longtime friend, Vahik Aghamalian, from their Iran days in the 1960s. He also met former travel companions, David and Aiko Fadness, who had come to Los Angeles to meet them. After LA, they flew to Vancouver to spend time with Tom's British Columbian family. Tom and his wife then went on to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory to explore a little of the Alaska Highway, by car, up to Burwash Landing on Kluane Lake and the, now abandoned, Kluane Wilderness Village in Kluane National Park. A day trip to Takhini Hot Springs completed their experience of the legendary Yukon, before they flew to Montreal.
July 15, 2009
Tom is at home in Gold Coast, Australia, preparing for his next planetary foray---a 3-month journey
which includes 2 months in Canada's Far North. Starting with a visit to British Columbia and the
Yukon Territory, in late-July, he will later join the 118-passenger m.v. Clipper Adventurer for five
separate voyages that plan to take in Greenland, Ellesmere Island, Cornwallis Island, Devon Island,
the Northwest Passage, Victoria Island, Banks Island, Melville Island, Baffin Island, Northern Quebec,
Newfoundland and Labrador, St.-Pierre & Miquelon, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Tom is in the mountain town of Merida, the
adventure-sports capital of Venezuela, and
perhaps even of South America. This, so
called, "City of Gentlemen" (La Ciudad de los
Caballeros) is nestled at the northern end of
the Andes Mountains, in the shadows of
Venezuela's highest peaks (Pico Bolivar is
the highest of these). Merida is a university
town and also well established to offer
outdoor-sports enthusiasts mountaineering,
hiking, rock climbing, horse-riding, mountain
biking, white-water rafting, paragliding, and
the sport where you could drown in your own
adrenalin---canyoning!
today, he is physically broken.
Hiking to the top of a river canyon, Tom,
canyoning guide, Wilmer Peres, and co-
canyoneer, Laura McKiernan of San Diego,
California, rappelled (abseiled) down
three, progressively higher waterfalls.
The first waterfall was 6m (20 ft) high and
the rappel was right through the thundering
fall, ending in the pool of foaming water at
the bottom. It's like being pounded by a
water cannon while dangling at the end of a
rope. After wading further down the river,
sliding into rock pools, and jumping straight
down several smaller falls---into foaming
waterfall pools of unknown depth---they
reached the second fall and rappelled down
its 17-meter (60-ft) cascade.
27-meter (100-ft) monster fall. With guide, Wilmer,
staying at the top to handle the ropes, Tom went
down first and waited at the bottom. Co-canyoneer,
Laura, rappelled next and, at the waterfall pool, she
lost her footing and sank below the foaming water.
Tom reacted quickly, reached underwater to grab her by
her helmet and rescued her from drowning. The day
ended at the bottom of the river canyon where Wilmer
made them delicious sandwiches. An interesting
outing, but the cost was more physical than monetary;
Tom had bruised a thigh, gashed his shin, cut his
ankles, sprained a little finger, and both hands had
nylon rope burn.
Tom is on Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, offshore from the village of La Concha. He overnighted in a cabin on stilts over the water, in order to observe the unique phenomenon of the silent Catatumbo Lightning. This lightning is thunderless and is probably caused by cold air coming down from the nearby 5,000-meter high mountains and mixing with the hot, humid air rising from the surface of Lake Maracaibo, to create an ionization effect. The intermittent Catatumbo lightning flashes were visible just after sunset, but the best "light show" spectacle of virtually uninterrupted lightning flashes was from 4:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. and it was well worth getting up to see it. After taking a swim in South America's largest lake and observing the wildlife in the mangrove forest along the lake's edges, he headed back through the mountains to the city of Merida.
Tom is in the village of Taganga, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, not far from Santa Marta. His Colombian trip had started with a 1-hour flight from Bogota to the historic Spanish colonial town of Cartagena, which thrived as a major (and well fortified) stronghold for Spanish gold and emeralds during the 16th to 18th centuries. While in Cartagena, he rode a bus 40km out of town, to the Totumo mud volcano. Inside the cone of the volcano, he immersed himself in the creamy-thick, black mud and was massaged by a local mud masseur before climbing down again and walking to the river to wash off the mud.
After Cartagena, he had gone by bus to the Caribbean port of Tolu and, from there, by boat to the San Bernardo islands. Returning to Tolu, he took an 8-hour ride by public coach, back through Cartagena to Barranquilla, and on to Santa Marta and Taganga. Surprisingly, tiny Taganga has become a hotbed of scuba diving in Colombia, and there are many dive shops there, offering diver training and certification at astonishingly low cost. Tom sampled the diving and, despite two dives with poor visibility, found the coral reef here in relatively good health, although the variety of fish sighted was quite limited.
Tom is in Bogota, Colombia, having completed his 22-day journey across Cuba and flown to Colombia's surprisingly modern and well run capital, which has retained the historic quality of its downtown core of La Candelaria. After Baracoa, he had flown to Havana and toured the Cuban capital's historic monuments, museums and street life, filled with down-to-earth, local restaurants and cafes where it is almost impossible not to hear a live band playing the rhythmic Cuban music that fills this country with song. After Havana, he made visits to Cuba's tobacco country in the far western province of Pinar del Rio, the source of Cuba's fabled cigars, and the towns of Soroa and Vinales. A few days at the beaches of Maria la Gorda, and a dive into the coral reefs there, capped the Cuban journey before his return to Havana, and the continuation of the Latin American journey to Colombia.
Tom is in Guantanamo Province, in the coastal town of Baracoa, which lies on the Atlantic Ocean side of Cuba. Baracoa teems with history. Columbus first came here in 1492; the Spanish founded a colony here in 1511, then arrested the Taino Indian chief, resisting the colonizers, and publicly burned him at the stake; Che Guevarra came here in the early-1960's and set up a chocolate factory, given the availability of the cacao bean plant. Baracoa is the greenest part of Cuba, thanks to plentiful rainfall, and the mountains and countryside are lush with coconut plantations and citrus groves.
Throughout much of this journey, Tom is sampling a delightful accommodation option, the Casas Particulares (the Cuban version of homestays)---private rooms rented to visitors by families that have officially registered their homes for this purpose. It's a great way of getting to know how Cubans live, eat, play, chat with friends and family members, and go about their daily chores.
Tom is in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's second largest city. It is Easter Sunday, but everything functions here as if on a normal weekday. While visiting the Church of El Cobre, he saw a small crowd lighting candles to the Virgin inside the Basilica del Cobre and being led through the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary by a local female parishioner---a rare sight in officially atheistic Cuba. This is his sixth major road stop in Cuba, after La Habana, Santa Clara (where Che Guevarra is buried), Trinidad, Camaguey, and the village of Amancio.
These Cuban girls in Baracoa (picture, left) are not just idly hanging out in the street. They are busy judges, scoring a street dance competition among their school age peers (see picture, directly above). Throughout Cuba, one comes across such dance competitions in public places, usually sponsored by junior schools or high schools.
Tom is in Quito, Ecuador, having finished a stay inside the Bella Vista cloud forest, in the northern part of Ecuador. This tropical forest is teeming with bird life, especially humming-birds.
Before arriving here, he spent 12 days cruising around 12 of the islands of the Galapagos Archipelago. Aboard the 38-meter cruising yacht M/V Tip Top IV, along with 15 other passengers (the limit set by the Galapagos National Park authorities is no more than 16 persons ashore, at a time, off any visiting boat), he visited Isla Baltra, Isla Seymour, Isla Genovesa, Isla Fernandina, Isla Isabela, Isla Santa Maria, Isla Espanola, Puerto Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz, Isla Santa Fe, Isla San Cristobal, Isla South Plaza, Isla Bartolome, and back to Isla Baltra. From there, he flew back to Quito, via Guayaquil.
Tom is back in Gold Coast, Australia, having completed his third round-the-world journey within 2 years. He began this 2 1/2-month trip by flying from Brisbane to Vladivostok, in Russia's Far East. Next evening, from Vladivostok's train station, he set off on a 20-day journey to Moscow---seven time zones and 10,052 kilometres (6,250 miles) of rail travel away, using three separate rail systems.
Along the way, during several of the journey stops in Russia's Far East and Siberia, he did homestays with Russian families. In Khabarovsk, his homestay hostess, Anna Styepanovna (center, in white blouse and jeans), invited him for a meal at the dacha (country cottage) of her friends. Here, her son barbecues the shashlik. Dachas typically have their own vegetable and fruit garden, and city locals usually escape to their dachas in the countryside on weekends and holidays.
A 36-hour train ride on the Baikalo-Amurskaya Magistral (BAM) rail line brought Tom to Tynda. The foreign rail traveler can hardly appreciate the scale of this 4,308-km engineering feat, covering almost half of Russia. Built over a period of 60 years, on extremely difficult terrain, it exacted a terrible price in human lives and suffering. Workers who built the BAM railway, and those who serve on it, today (many from Tynda), are intensely proud of this achievement, but it remains virtually unknown outside Russia, while the other major line, the Trans-Siberian Railway, gets all the attention and publicity from foreign travel promoters.
After a brief visit to the northern shores of Lake Baikal, he continued the 2-day rail journey, via Tayshet, to Irkutsk at the southern end of this lake (the more direct hydrofoil service from Severobaykalsk to Irkutsk was closed for the season). Tom then spent several days on the shores of Lake Baikal, at the tiny holiday town of Listvyanka, where Russians from Irkutsk go to picnic on weekends. Back in Irkutsk, he rejoined the Trans-Siberian Railway, for the remaining 3-day train ride to Moscow, stopping only briefly at the 34 stations along the way (platform rest stops to buy food and drinks, stretch the legs and sniff the air).
From there, Tom traveled to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, a country still clinging to its Soviet past. Compared to Moscow, he found Minsk to be astonishingly clean, orderly, and its boulevards lined with colossal, soot-free buildings and well-kept public parks. But this city of Stalinist architecture is noticeably devoid of churches and cathedrals, for this is still a land where atheism predominates.
Next, he traveled to Kiev, capital of Ukraine, home of the Orange Revolution, and a city full of spectacular Orthodox churches and cathedrals topped with gold cupolas.
Bargain-priced Moldova has to be Eastern Europe's best-kept travel secret. It is brimming with history, ancient cave monasteries, and a gentle, bucolic countryside dotted with vineyards. The people are friendly, willing, and happy to show the visitor what their country is like. And it is amazing that Moldova's fabulous wines have not yet been discovered by the outside world.
From Moldova, Tom visited Bucharest in Romania, later driving with his guide along the Prahova Valley to the Carpathian Mountains, and into Transylvania, where the 14th-century Bran Castle (promoted to tourists as "Dracula's Castle") stands not far from the town of Brasov. Thanks to its membership in the European Union, Romania is a very progressive and well-run country. Moldova, its much poorer neighbor to the northeast, has not been so fortunate and remains outside the EU.
While in Sarajevo, Tom had another reminder of historic turning points: the event that sparked World War I. At the precise spot where the assassination took place, Tom got his Sarajevo guide to reenact the 1914 pistol shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife by Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip (picture, left).
From Sarajevo, Tom crossed the Atlantic to spend 5 days with longtime Czech friend, Mike Jellen, who lives in Toronto. Afterwards, he visited his former hometown of Vancouver, staying with his mother and the rest of his Canadian family, before returning to Australia, via San Francisco.
Tom is at home in Gold Coast, Australia, having just completed a journey around the world in 80 days, which covered all seven continents---a route very different from the one undertaken by Phileas Fogg and Passepartout for their 80-day adventure around the world, in Jules Verne’s celebrated book. [See adjoining map of Tom’s 7-continent route]. Here is his report.
I started in Brisbane, Australia, on January 3, and flew via Auckland, New Zealand and Santiago, Chile to Buenos Aires. From there I took a domestic flight to Ushuaia, at the southern tip of Argentina's Tierra del Fuego, where I boarded the m.v. Ushuaia for a 1-month Antarctic photo safari to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the South Shetlands, Antarctic Peninsula, and the Palmer Archipelago.
Tom's 7 continents in 80 days journey (354k)From Quito, I traveled to Coral Springs, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia to spend time with old classmates from my Tehran, Iran high school days in the 1950s. I then flew to British Columbia for some skiing at Silver Star Mountain with my brother, and to visit my 90-year-old mother and sister, in Vancouver. Next, I flew to London to be reunited with another Tehran schoolmate, whom I had not seen in 42 years. We drove together to East Tilbury, Essex, where I had spent my late-teens, during the 1950s, at the Bata Shoe factory complex, learning all about rubber technology and shoemaking [see the webpage Tom's life story]. It had taken me 49 years to revisit East Tilbury. Sadly, the Bata factory complex still standing there is now just a rusting, crumbling hulk of empty buildings, thanks to the rampant globalization of manufacturing.
I continued to Guangzhou (Canton) in China. What struck me most about Mainland China was the furious, catch-up rate of progress. The number of construction sites, tall cranes and modern skyscrapers sprouting right alongside shabby, old residential blocks from Mao’s era makes a paradoxical statement about the real China---a potent polluter, no doubt, but a powerful player on the world stage. On Day Number 80, March 23, I was back on Continent 7 (Australasia), returning to Brisbane with 6,000 digital photographs on my pocket hard drive. Later that day, my wife and I danced into the night at a gala organized by the Iranian community living in Gold Coast, to celebrate the Persian New Year---an event near and dear to my formative years in Persia.