Longyearbyen

 

The harbour was packed with ships disgorging well upholstered tourists. The French were in town and of course had to upstage everyone. Their ship looked like a Russian billionaire’s yacht and on the wharf, they’d erected a receiving station.

Today there would be one thousand tourists in a town with a permanent population of just over two thousand.

The walk into Longyearbyen was past loads of pipes, new buildings, and a garage or two. In January 2017 Peter and I had spent 3 days there and I was trying to get my bearing in the daylight. In January it’s dark 24 hours. We had stayed at the Radisson Blue, but could I find it, it was tucked behind some other buildings. I could have sworn there was a main street off to the right, but my memory was playing tricks.

In the winter, in the dark everything looked crisp and clean – even the roads were completely snow covered. Now in June daylight the place looked a mess. We passed a huge block of student accommodation, and you could see on the ground floor washing machines piled on top of each other where the students did their washing. It wasn’t there five years ago, and I stopped and asked a stranger and he confirmed that. There were loads of small houses being built and outside every home was kiddies' bikes and ice prams.

We finally reached something I recognised the fur and leather shop, which five years ago had been run by a New Yorker. They were still there as was the stuffed walrus head on sale for 190,000 kroners. The Co-op had expanded; it was big five years ago now it was enormous – a one stop shop for everything except alcohol, which was next door and medicines.

The main road petered out into a dirt track with masses of snow scooters parked up, useless without snow. Then we meet a couple from England. I don’t know how we got onto the subject, but they told us they’d been kicked off their cruise ship because they had caught Covid. We were told fifteen passengers on a Hurtigruten cruise had contracted the virus. Our two had been banished to a hotel at the far end of the town. Their cruise ship had left, and they’d been given hotel accommodation and tickets to get back home in due course. They were pretty pissed off, especially with the treatment handed out by Hurtigruten.

Jeff from Minnesota was on a mission – to get a fridge magnet and a small souvenir to put in his nicnac case back home. In the Co-op he spied a shiny plastic  Polar Bear. Initially he resisted the temptation to buy it and we walked towards the shop’s exit only to see Jeff head back to the display and pick up a shiny bear.

On our way back to the ship we passed a wooden prehistoric sea reptile. Looking inside there were drawings of the creature and its skeleton. We crawled about just inside to get photographs and as we were leaving a group of school kids walked by with their teachers – Longyearbyen appears to be a great place to bring up a family.

Back on ship we hung around to find out what was to happen the next day and after dinner we set sail for Buchananhalovya and Hamiltonbukta at the far end of Spitzbergen. An early start into the Zodiacs for a wet landing and a trek on land keeping an eye out for bears!