Day Four
July 24, 2015
Marwan. 6 foot 4 inches. Lebanese from Paris, France. Waiter.
But he wasn’t just a waiter to us. Only two days had passed and we already knew he was our friend. He talked to us about his previous travels. He told us about his family. He joked with us. He gave us milk before we sat down at the table. He knew our order without us telling it. He made us excited to come to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He easily became our favorite person on the ship (besides the captain of course).
We never wanted to get up from breakfast because we were leaving behind our friend, but we had to because there was an announcement of spotting beluga whales. Seven of them in fact, right in front of our ship.
Once the beluga whales disappeared again, we are off to Ny-Alesund, one of the northernmost towns in the world. There we were strictly told to stay in the perimeter given since a mama bear and cub had been spotted just 48 hours before.
This wasn’t hard given that Ny Alesund was nothing more than one main road no longer than 200 meters with buildings on the side. But one building stood out to all of us – the gift shop. And trust me, we bought everything. We bought postcards to post in the northernmost post office in the world, stuffed animals, t-shirts, pens, lanyards, sweaters, and even Norwegian candy and gum.
All of us immediately wrote postcards to our families and friends and posted them in the northernmost post office in the world. How cool is that!
Jack Rothschild
After exploring a little more and hearing the story of the famous explorer Amundsen, we were back on to the ship heading towards Fjortende Julibreen, also known as the 14th of July glacier.
But before our landing, all of the passengers went to the theater for a expedition recap to hear of the plans, but there was a ring on the intercom, which was either extremely good or bad news. Lucky for us, it was good news – that same mama bear and a cub that had been spotted in Ny Alesund days before was right on the port side (the left side) of our ship.
I can promise you that that theater had never cleared out so quickly before. It was a stampede. People rushed to their rooms to get their parkas and cameras so they could find the best views of the bear. But even with binoculars, the view was nothing more than two grains of rice! Yet, everyone took pictures and felt that this was an omen for more and more polar bear sightings.
With high spirits, all of us got down at our next landing, the 14th of July glacier, which was oddly a rather warm location despite being a huge chunk of ice. On one side of the landing was a huge glacier, while the other side was a huge expanse of tundra filled with reindeer poop, flora, fauna, and permafrost. It had a little bit for everyone’s science projects.
Jack Rothschild
After a great landing, our zodiac drivers took us on a longer route back to the ship. A route that passed through the guillemot’s colony (an Arctic seabird). There were hundreds and hundreds of birds. You would never expect to see that many birds at a time, trust me.
However, our day wasn’t over yet. In fact, it was just getting started. We had a cocktail dinner reception with none other than Captain Etienne Garcia, the captain of Le Boreal for the past fifteen years. However, we barely got to see the captain during dinner. We sat in a fancier restaurant on the second floor this time, where we served meals course by course.
One hour went by. Still not done with dinner. Another hour went by. Still not done with dinner.
Dinner that usually takes us 30 minutes, took us two and a half hours that day and we never got to see the captain. All of us promised each other that we would never eat at that restaurant again. Wouldn’t we all rather have dinner with Marwan on the sixth floor?
Due to the extremely painful delay, we were given a later bed check, a check conducted by our two Harker teacher chaperones to ensure that everyone was safely in their rooms. But as the later hours started to progress, we started to see more and more intoxicated passengers pass through the hallways. It wasn’t long before we realized how much alcohol was actually served on this ship.