Northwest Passage, Day +20, September 5th

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Back home

Reflections

Last leg home

The short overnight flight from Toronto to London Heathrow, which departed late due to the late arrival of 5 individuals, passed better than we had expected. Having wined and dined in the lounge in Toronto we only availed ourselves of breakfast (after 11am BST) to catch as much shut-eye as possible.

We landed about 40 minutes late, went speedily through Border Control but had to wait nearly 50 minutes for our luggage and with a relatively short change-over in Toronto we were beginning to get anxious as most passengers had departed with their luggage. Just after Lynne had joined the long queue for customer baggage assistance, just in case, our 3 bags arrived together. Phew!

We took the tube to Belsize Park as that suited us and got home for a cuppa at 4pm, ready to contemplate the task of unpacking, starting the laundry before going out to dinner and packing again for our return to France within 48 hours. We reckon we covered over 17,500 km, and that excludes the travel to and from La Coste.

Time to reflect on our holiday.

I’m not sure it met our expectations but they were perhaps unreasonably high, encouraged by over-marketing by Hurtigruten. We have, of course, already been fortunate to enjoy some epic adventures in comparison, including the Galapagos, Patagonia and the magnificent splendour of the two-week train journey from Dar-es-salaam to Cape Town with Rovos Rail.

Accepting that this was not the sole trip of a life-time for us, the voyage was splendid. The ship’s facilities (see Day 10) were excellent. We loved the food, especially breakfast and dinner; Lynne was cautious about the buffet lunch not knowing what was safe for her to eat and not trusting the answers she got. It was great having unlimited wine in the restaurant and unlimited coffee onboard too. Our extras were only the wine and Armagnac after dinner, our purchases in the shop and a couple of extra excursions (the hike on Day 7 and the boat to the Icefjord on Day 8). We ensured we got plenty of exercise and attended our fill of excellent lectures on a variety of subjects, concerning the seas, wild life and birds, history and science.

We enjoyed all our excursions from the ship, but would have liked more. This may have been a function of the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators’ guidelines for conservation purposes, but it compares unfavourably to our trip to Antarctica, where we likely managed at least 2 excursions per day. I think that the number of lectures, cloud and bird observation on deck and science centre workshops were designed to make up for the lack of excursions. We are not used to travelling in a group and we probably found that more limiting in the Canadian High Arctic than in Greenland as we managed to enjoy some independence ashore there.

We saw many icebergs and ice floes and visited some of the remotest and most desolate places on earth. The history of the pioneers who explored theses areas at the turn of the 19th century, made these expeditions exciting, augmented by the evidence they left behind.

Unfortunately there was less evidence of Inuit traditions in the villages we visited, although we did enjoy the amateur show in Pond Inlet and the museum at Gjøa Haven. There was more evidence of local culture in Greenland, especially the dogs used for sledding and a fantastic musuem in Nuuk. We would visit Greenland again.

There wasn’t as much snow and ice as we had expected; the consequences of global warming were far too apparent.

We saw several Polar Bears, on land, ice floe and in the water as well as cubs. We saw lots of whales and seals and quite a few birds, including eagles, snow geese and of course fulmers. But Hurtigruten had majored on the amount of wildlife to expect; for wild life, Antarctica excelled, both in quantity and proximity.

There was a lot to do; we never got bored or indeed time to read either of the 2 books we each brought. Peter spent time completing the blog, with Lynne’s eagle eye for detail. Lynne even had recourse to the use of her laptop for work purposes.

Overall it was a good group of fellow passengers, with many nationalities and we met lots of interesting folk. We have never met so many travellers who have visited Antarctica, more than 70%, but we guess the Northwest Passage is an even rarer expedition than Antarctica with a lower level of passenger ships able to make the journey in a short window of opportunity. We heard the number 66 as the total number of  passenger trips through the Northwest Passage before the closure during the Pandemic.

The Captain, crew, restaurant/bar team and expedition team were fantastic, always happy to oblige. We loved the amateur entertainment of the crew as the Seasick Band. We had 3 evenings of story-telling in the Bar and a rather raucous quiz.

We had seven Covid cases over the whole voyage (and reputedly one failed Covid test in Reykjavik). While this was managed well for the rest of us, it did mean that masks were still recommended on board. Our hands became chapped with all the obligatory hand-washing (together with temperature-checks) before entering the restaurant.

It was obligatory for all visitors to the Inuit villages to wear masks, because of the paucity of medical facilities. We also were required to wear masks for the duration of the 3 flights home, which we thought was excessive. These requirements no doubt put a dampener on the enjoyment of the holiday.

Overall an enjoyable holiday, but perhaps too much learning at the expense of activity, which certainly will not concern us for our 4 weeks in the Himalayas, next month, when we might look back fondly on the recounting of exploits by the early pioneers to us in a sitting position!