Welcome to Mark’s Crazy Summer blog part 2!

In this blog entry, I will be talking about my final and biggest adventure of this summer, A whole month in the Arctic!! You can see my route, below!

My parents work on a cruise ship in the Arctic and they come with stories about there trips and I am always envious, but this time I got to come along. I had traveled with my parents on Adventure Canada before but this time, being older, I was almost completely independent. My parents, who were working, woke up at five and I was on my own. I would get myself food, attend lectures, and get ready for the zodiacs all on my own. I would see them out driving zodiacs like James Bond, weaving in between icebergs in and whisking passengers to and from shore.

One of my favorite experiences of the trip was when our boat drifted very close to an ice floe with polar bears on it. It was a beautiful evening and a little chili. There was a strong current using us toward a big iceberg. When I heard the announcements I ran from the lowest floor to the top just to see it. It was a great site and was only about 12 meters away. As we floated close everybody either had a binoculars or cameras focused on them. It was one of my favorite experiences.

I also have to tell you about seeing narwhals for the first time. We were in Croker Bay (on Devon Island) and I was standing on the top deck. Narwhals had been spotted by some zodiacs. All of a sudden, I saw it!! like a lightsabre coming out of the water – a tusk!!!! I think it’s because I wore my lucky narwhal hat! I was one of the only people to actually see a tusk. It was so cool! Narwhals! Narwhals, swimming in the ocean, causing a commotion, ’cause they are so awesome!!

On the cruise ship, I befriended a lot of people: crew, passengers, and staff. I have a lot of friends now. I think some of the best people were the staff.  I’ll give you an example: George Sirk was one of my favorites and Jerry kobelinko. I also really liked Dawn and I met Les Stroud aka Survivorman! I have all his DVDs and some of his books 🙂

I liked George Sirk (see the photo of me and George below) because he is really funny and smart. I learned more about birds than I thought possible. He is an expert in bird studies and is so good at spotting birds, even when camouflaged. I liked Jerry kobelenko cause he is funny and smart and an adventurer. He has been the first person to step on some land and has skied the north a lot. But when your traveling funny things happen and especially with polar bears. One time he was scaring away a polar bear from his sled and the polar bear went but took a bag – his food bag! He went after the bear and finally found him carefully opening the zipper, ignoring five pounds of sausage and going straight for the Belgian chocolates that he was bringing to a friend.

Just thinking about the ship, I miss the pancakes and my friend Augusti making me an omelet every day – he even gave me a tour of the kitchen. The Chef was from France and he became my pal. He made me special hamburgers.

The passengers were great too! I met a famous magician named Andre Cadieux and one less famous magician named Gerry Sullivan. He taught me a lot and showed me a lot of tricks that are very cool. One very good friend that I made is a climate scientist named Matt. He studies the ship logs from old explorers and whalers to see how the climate has changed. He taught me how to read and transcript ship logs. The writing was funny because they called whales  “fish” and narwhals “unicorns”.

So, on the ship, I celebrated my real birthday! We were in Nuuk (pronounced: nuke) which is the capital of Greenland and I had a great day. We got have caribou burgers!!!! Funny enough, It tasted like beef jerky. For my birthday I got a fitbit, a BB8 Sphero a shirt that had the scream except the person was Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes plus I started my coin collection.

The coin collection all started when ladies named Sue and Margret from New Zealand that had won a toonie that had 2 polar bear cubs, I let them know that I wanted it badly by jokingly asking to exchange toonies (my regular for her cool one) she refused my offer, but on my birthday, slipped an envelope under my door with three coins: one 50 cents (New Zealand) two rupees (India) and ten pence (England) the new design. Then it snowballed from there! Once people found out I was collecting coins, everyone starting giving them to me. since the ship has people from everywhere, I collected tons! The ship’s crew also game coins from the Philippines, India, Curacao, and France.  It was ridiculous!! Someone would give me a coin and someone would see that and give me five coins and somebody would see that and give me another coin. It ended up filling my glasses case.

My mom would let me drive the zodiac when nobody was around, but sometimes I would let my dad drive for safety. hehe.

In order to make the visit to the Arctic official, you have to do one very important thing!! Swim in the ice-cold ocean! I did it twice and even convinced my dad to do it with me. It was COOOOOLLLLLLLDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!

Visting the communities was super fun. In Cape Dorset we saw a lot of Inuit Art. My mom and I met a nice boy named Abraham. He showed us around his town. In Kimmirut, we played soccer against the town and we lost. It was a good game. I got to be the mascot!

Greenland communities are really different. The houses are colorful and the people are friendly. Below is a town called Kangaamuit (below). We got to listen to a local choir in a church and watch a seal be skinned. I got to try eating the heart (raw!). It tasted like blood. Strange. I got my photo taken with a Greenlandic mom and daughter. They didn’t speak English but I could say “tusen takk”, which is the same as thank you in Danish.

One of my favorite communities in Greenland is a called sisimiut, in Greenland. It’s so colorful with its houses harbors and ponds. It’s got a great Danish cafe that sells danishes (duh) which are really good.  I had been there before when I was six, and remembered a little bit around the city. I have a picture when I was six and when I was eleven, standing in the same spot. Boy, I sure have grown!! I hope I get to go back for a 3rd photo!

See you next time, international moose followers!!