July 04 – Camp Zoe, New London and Ny Ålesund

We had breakfast sitting in Lilliehӧӧk fjord overlooking Lillehӧӧk glacier.  The day was sunny and the bay covered with small pieces of ice.  Really magical!  

After breakfast the ship repositioned to a place called Camp Zoe.  It is a single small cabin overlooking a fjord and is used as a “get away” place for scientists and residents of Ny Ålesund, nearby.

After a short stop at the cabin the group split up with some (including Mary) doing an easy hike around the area looking at flowers and talking about the area, reindeer and the area’s history.

The other group (including Paul) hiked up a tall hill nearby.  They had basically the same view as those who stayed down lower.  

Along the trail was a claim marker that had been set out in 1905 claiming the area for London based company.

Paul's group did get to see an arctic fox harassing some geese, trying to get at the goslings.  The fox is hard to see but he is to the right of the geese in this picture.

It was actually relatively warm today.  Both of us ended up taking off a couple of layers of clothing. 

Once on board the ship cruised slowly by an island in the fjord that had a bird colony.

We saw some puffins in the water.

We also saw several reindeer on the island. 

By mid-afternoon we were in New London, a former marble mining village.  It turned out the constant freezing and thawing of water through the seasons caused the marble to be of particularly poor quality so the operation was closed down rather quickly.  We opted to not go ashore. 

As usual the cruising took us to some wonderful areas.

After dinner we arrived at Ny Ålesund.  

The town was a former mining village.  The mine closed in the early 1960’s after a major mine disaster.  The town is now a high arctic research center.  During the winter it has about 20 inhabitants; in the summer, about 180 to 200.  The town is the northernmost permanent settlement in the world (depending on what you read and the criteria) except for a few military bases.  Most of the inhabitants are scientists.  The Chinese, Koreans, and English and several Scandinavian countries have research operations there.

The Chinese facility had Chinese Lions flanking the main entrance.

We took a tour into the town and then wandered around on our own.  The weather was actually almost warm all day and we didn’t really need much in the way of layers.  The town faced the beautiful fjord.

There was a small museum, the northernmost post office in the world, 

Post Office

a shop and a bar.  

Local bar with Mining Train in front of it.

Most of the housing facilities do not have kitchens and everyone eats in the village canteen. They also have a small hotel (or hotellet) that claims to be the northern most hotel. in the world.  It was formerly a dormitory for mining staff.

And much of the housing appears to apartments or dormitories.

While walking the village we saw a reindeer,

number of barnacle geese with little goslings,

and some arctic terns settling down for the "night" (not that it gets dark here at night).

The town has an airship tower that was used for docking an airship that was used by  the Almundsen-Ellsworth Transpolar Flight in 1926.  

All in all it was an interesting port of call.