Arctic Bay

Before we left for our mini vacation to Arctic Bay, JJ had a conversation with a fellow physician who had just come back from Grise Fiord. Apparently,  there was no food--the situation was so dire a CBC film crew staying there was about to abandon their project and go home. The only food items available in the local store? Canned pumpkin and condiments (ketchup, mustard). In light of this news, just in case there was a similar situation in Arctic Bay, we made a quick trip to Northmart. We decided to buy rice, Spam (we had to settle for no-name Kam), mandarin oranges, a loaf of bread, cheese and crackers, bad-for-you munchies (chocolate, donuts, Pringles), peanut butter, and pepperoni sticks. We also picked up strawberries, mandarin oranges, and a veggie tray for the health centre staff.

This is how you pack for a trip to Arctic Bay.

JJ got me to take photos of his phone compass
during the flight. These numbers, for those who
understand them, are supposed to be REALLY COOL.

The flight we took Saturday morning went to Pond Inlet, Arctic Bay, and then on to Resolute Bay. Making up the bulk of passengers was a large group of Japanese tourists with huge cameras. Were they photographers? Ornithologists? No idea.  In true Nunavut fashion, the sole flight attendant announced that tourists were not to take photos of anyone on the plane without their permission, and oh yeah, can anyone who speaks Japanese please translate that? And it turns out, airport runways north of Iqaluit are dirt/gravel! They are well-maintained, but nowhere near as smooth as pavement. One Inuit lady on the plane told me on her last trip flying from Resolute Bay to Arctic Bay, a landing wheel came off the plane. There are multiple wheels, so the plane landed just fine, but was then grounded for 3 days while a crew flew in from elsewhere to do repairs and test for safety. In her pragmatic Inuit point of view, she didn't understand why the plane that came in with the mechanical crew couldn't fly the rest of the stranded passengers to their destination.  (Why not, indeed?)

When we landed in Pond Inlet all passengers had to disembark so our little plane could refuel.

Airport at Pond Inlet.

The ticket counters in Pond Inlet. This set-up is identical to the airport
in Arctic Bay, except there is no Canadian North sign as they don't
fly there.

Can you believe the Pond Inlet airport had a walrus baculum on display?

Tourism Nunavut magazine stand.

Safety information about polar bears.

We landed in Arctic Bay around 6pm. Gail, the charge nurse at the health centre, met us at the airport with the GN (Government of Nunavut) van. (There is no taxi service in Arctic Bay.) We collected our luggage, loaded up the van, and headed into town.

The airport in Arctic Bay.

The baggage carousel (wood trailer being pulled by a truck).

Arctic Bay is officially known as a "hamlet", and has a population of just over 1,000 people. The hamlet is surrounded on 3 sides by mountains (the fourth side is the bay), so in Inuktitut the community is called Ikpiarjuk, which means "the pocket". It is home to many unique species of high-arctic birds, and to narwhals and bowhead whales.  We didn't see any narwhals or whales on our trip, as the bay was still frozen. The topography is quite beautiful, and reminded both of us of the fjords we saw while visiting Norway. Apparently Admiralty Inlet, which is nearby, has the longest fjord in the world. (source)

Arctic Bay

View from the top of the mountain.

The sun isn't setting, its just behind a mountain
temporarily.

At the local Inn, you don't book a room, you book a bed. That bed could be in a room with anyone else's bed. Beds are $250 per night (there is at least one queen size bed available for $330 for a couple). Thanks to Gail, JJ and I were not staying at the local Inn, sharing a room with somebody (or somebodies) else. Instead, we had a great little apartment/townhouse in the building known locally as "The Five-Plex". The five-plex usually houses various health professionals while they are working in Arctic Bay. While we were there our neighbours were an RN (registered nurse), an LPN (licensed practical nurse), and a speech and language pathologist.

The 5-plex.

Our home away from home.

Living room/kitchen in the two bedroom apartment.

Our solution to 24 hour daylight was to cover
 the bedroom window with two garbage bags.

As I've told you all before, Arctic Bay has sunlight 24 hours/day for 3 months. Light is a problem, and it is impossible to know what time of day or night it is by looking outside. We covered the bedroom window, and figured that would be good enough.  It wasn't.  Our first night in Arctic Bay was, well, miserable. It turned out the bedroom was only dark if the door was closed. As it was a very small room, it quickly became very stuffy.  We tried opening the window, hoping that even with the garbage bags in place, a breeze might blow through.  A very slight breeze did trickle into the room, but it was the kind of trickle you might expect if your window air-conditioning unit is on the way out and you decide to lay in front of it as it gasps its lasts dying breaths. Plus, in Arctic Bay, like in Iqaluit, kids are up playing outside ALL NIGHT.  And they don't play quietly. Children and teenagers run around the neighborhood shouting, showing off tricks on their four-wheelers, playing loud music, etc. (Their motto appears to be: "If the sun is up, so are we!") If we closed the window and opened the bedroom door, the room was bright enough to knit, or do an oil painting.....you get the drift.

Desperate, I grabbed the two cushions off the sofa and tried to sleep on the floor in the laundry room/broom closet--the only room in the house that didn't have windows. Yes, aside from the sunlight coming in around the door, it was dark. Plenty dark enough to sleep. However, it was still small and stuffy. And at 3am someone decided to play the metal piles (stilts) under our house like a xylophone. Bless their musical heart. To throw in some more "middle of the night fun", the satellite phone rang off and on all night. Whenever we tried to answer, there was no one on the other end. (The satellite phone, which is supposed to be for on-call emergencies only, has now been turned off. If anyone really needs JJ they can come and knock on the door.)

What time is it? Could be 2pm. Could be 2am!

The next day JJ and I wised up. We picked up some masking tape from the local co-op, along with extra large black garbage bags.  We also purchased a table fan, and a couple of fluffy pillows (the apartment came with two that were as flat as pancakes). After covering every window in the apartment with garbage bags, the apartment was dark. The fan created white noise to drown out the darling children outside. Bliss!  We slept like babies for the rest of our stay. (We gifted the extra pillows and fan to the apartment. It was our little contribution to the future sanity of health care professionals who stay there.)

As we were staying in an apartment with a full kitchen, we could make breakfast and lunch at home. For dinner, there was Jacques at the Tangmaarvik Inn.  Jacques is an honest-to-god French chef. (He confided that although his name is Jacques, the Inuit here call him "Jack", so he has been Jack for 11 years now.) Despite the difficulty in procuring food in the high arctic, Jacques prepares amazing meals. This is a really good thing, as his little restaurant is the only deal in town. The evening we arrived we walked over to see if they had room for us for dinner.  Jacques said "no problem", and served us cream of vegetable soup (amazing), salad, shrimp, steak with peppercorn sauce, mashed potatoes and steamed carrots. We told him we would be here until Thursday, he said "no problem, dinner is usually served at 6pm."

Sweet!

View of the inn from the road.

Front door.

The restaurant. This is the only place in town to "eat out". JJ and I ate here
five times.

Jacques continued to make wonderful meals every night. There was no selection, but he would generally run ideas past us from one day to the next. "How do you feel about roast beef?" So far we've had steak, roast beef, chicken, and spaghetti. There is always a starter soup. For dessert he's made homemade black forest cake, blueberry pie, and apple pie. Not too shabby.

Jacques' amazing cream of vegetable soup.

This amazing photo was mounted on canvas and hung up on the wall of the inn.
It was taken, of course, by a hunter.

When we arrived we found we had no internet, and no working phone (although there were two phones in our unit--one was a satellite phone). JJ happened to walk outside at the same time as our next door neighbor, Dee. Dee is an RN who is staying here for a few months. She managed to set up a short-term internet connection for $80/month, and offered to let us piggyback on her wireless!  JJ offered her some money, but she turned him down. She also let us borrow her cordless phone, so he could make a few calls. THEN she offered to have us over for dinner, but we had already made arrangements for dinner with Jacques.

So, as long as we are considerate (no major downloads, etc.) we have internet courtesy of Dee! Yay!  I can work on my blog, I'll just upload the photos once I get back to Iqaluit.

*****

Update: Dee the nurse just got called to move to Qikiqtarjuaq (roughly pronounce this as: kick it ar shew ack) tomorrow morning!  As she will be taking her belongings with her, including her router, this means we will be losing our internet! So long world wide web, it was nice having you. We still don't have a working phone line in the house, either. In fact, at one point I picked up the phone and could hear two other people talking. I am unable to answer the phone, or to call out, but apparently other people can have conversations on our phone line. Huh.

Anyway, as its just me in an apartment with no phone and no internet, I'm now going on complete blog hiatus. I'm going to watch Alias Grace on DVD!  And sleep in!  Wahoo!

*****

And we're back.  It was a little odd not having access to a phone for 3 days--thankfully Jacques was kind enough to let JJ use the phone at the Inn if he had to make a call. And I had a lot of news to catch up on when I finally had access to the internet again! FYI: Alias Grace is a fantastic show to binge watch.  If you haven't already, check it out!

I have a lot more to tell everyone about the trip than will fit into one blog post, so up next: shopping in Arctic Bay, our snowmobile trip to Adams Sound (and the St. George Society Cliffs), and the health centre.