diary

Svalbard 78'N - Arctic Adventure

Svalbard is a remote island at 71-81 degrees north made up of 60% ice, the town of Longyearbyen where we stayed lies at 78 degrees north. The island has less than 3000 inhabitants and between 3000 and 6000 polar bears and is 1� times the size of Denmark. The island we visited was Spitsbergen which is governed by Norway. It is the kind of place that you don't lock your doors but always carry a rifle, this incase you get chased by a polar bear, you have a means of escape and the latter is self explanatory! The island is described as an arctic desert and it is only possible for people to live there because of the warmth provided by the gulf stream. We decided to visit after we heard one of our lecturers talking about it, we liked what we heard and we weren't to be disapointed! This my diary written during the trip, i left the more colourful expressions in for realism!

DAY ONE (13th April 2001)

Left Lule� at 6am after no sleep whatsoever. Train ride to Narvik was spectacular through places such as Boden, Dundret, Kiruna, Riksgr�nsen. Then arrived at Narvik after 30 mins of some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen. The train went along the top of all these fjords and through tunnels in the mountain. Arrived in Narvik after a six hour train ride, nothing was open due to Easter so we had to wander about for three hours but found a pub to have the first of many �4 pints of beer! Caught the bus to Tromsoe, a four hour journey, really uncomfortable, but endless beautiful scenery. Arrived in Tromsoe at around eight o'clock not having booked any accommodation! After wandering around with our cases we managed to get a triple room for half price at a really nice hotel. Went on a pub crawl in Tromsoe for more 'reasonably priced' beer, not! One of the bars, Solid, had the coolest toilets we've ever seen, with some weird mirror effects, especially freaky with a few jars in you! Found a pretty decent night club which placed excellent music and had a good mix of punters there. That night night i bought some fags that cost me over �5, it made me homesick!

DAY TWO (14th)
Had to get up fairly early next day for breakfast, went up a fjord opposite Tromsoe by cable car, the view was breathtaking! We got bored waiting for the bus home so we decided to slide down this icy road for a laugh, would maybe have been an idea for somebody to check for traffic!I was sliding down this stretch of road at high speed, a car was coming up the hill, i was unable to stop in time so the car knocked me flying on my arse, I've got a nasty wee scrape to show for it! We were taken to the airport by some wasp who charged us over a tenner! Caught plane to Longyearbyen, flight was amazing, over all the glaciers and stuff arrived 1� hours later after a fairly turbulent descent! Were taken to accommodation and discovered we could buy wine there, we got tanked up and headed to the local nightclub, which was only 100m from our guesthouse! Got totally hammered that night, it was an even better club than the one we found in Tromsoe, excellent atmosphere, i was actually dancing on top of a speaker for ages! Got some T-shirted photos outside and headed home in broad daylight at 3am!! Got home, took some drunken video footage as you do!

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