September 14, 2005
Cruise arctic adventure
Five area residents explore Baffin Island and western Greenland
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Polar bears, caribou stew, billion year old rocks and the chance to explore another culture - a typical cruise this wasn't.
Five area residents went on a 12-day arctic cruise last month that featured stops in Baffin Island and the western coast of Greenland. Terry Tarnow, Chad Tufts, Ruth Rague and Carl and Evelyn Johnson were among 105 cruisers on a special adventure boat owned by the Great Canadian Adventure Company.
The company features a varied itinerary of travel experiences revolving around educational and cultural tourism. Their special adventure boat, the M/V Explorer, is equipped for ice breaking, though that was not needed this trip, and has a shallow draft so it can launch Zodiac boats for quick jaunts.
In addition to the typical cruise amenities, this trip included lectures by an ecologist, a biologist and a geologist as well as members of the Inuit peoples, the natives of the arctic region.
An Inuit artist in residence on the ship demonstrated his work throughout the cruise while other natives explained the culture, archeology, language, traditions and art of the region. Kenojuak Ashevak, who made the famous Enchanted Owl print that later adorned a Canadian stamp, also lectured passengers on her culture's art.
"The learning aspect, my strongest appreciation was for all the wonderful resource people we had," said Ruth Rague, now retired from Northwestern Michigan College and a museum docent. "I love learning! I took a Mayan study tour about ten years ago and that trip was also a highlight to me."
A retired engineer, Chad Tufts was also captivated by the educational opportunities on the cruise - the first of it's kind he'd ever taken, but hopefully not the last.
"They did a great job aboard the ship of keeping us informed with lectures and with sitting down before we were going some place so we'd know exactly what we were going to see and what to look for," he said.
The ship stopped for a visit with five Canadian communities and three Greenland communities, where the people welcomed the tourists. During the wet landings, which meant the ten-passenger Zodiac landed just off shore and the riders splashed ashore. Children from the village would run to the water's edge and greet the visitors. Tarnow and Evelyn Johnson took along dried cherries to hand out to children at all the stops.
"The kids would show us Inuit games and there would be throat singing and often artists displaying their work," said Tarnow. "In the smallest community, they made us caribou stew and bannocks, like a fry bread."
Terry Tarnow, manager of the Dennos Museum Center's store, invited everyone on her Inuit mailing list to join the cruise and four signed up. She took the same trip last year with her husband and has previously traveled to the Nunavet regions and other native regions two previous times.
"Traveling in the arctic, you find something that connects you to the land up there, which is beautiful," noted Tarnow. "Once you travel there, you kind of get hooked, you want to go back again and again."
Then there were the polar bears, hungry polar bears at that. The company sent armed guards to accompany travelers when they hiked in remote locations, to protect them from these roaming carnivores. The travelers also came face to face with some polar bears when zipping around in the smaller Zodiac boats.
"We got really close to polar bears, they were on land and very healthy looking," said Evelyn Johnson, a docent at the museum. "They slipped into the water and started to follow us. We backed up slowly but it was unnerving because they looked hungry."
The land in the arctic is virtually barren, the tundra and extreme weather inhospitable to most plant life, although visitors sampled tiny blueberries and checked out a miniature willow tree that was a few hundred years old.
"There was really no snow, very little, on the tundra," said Tufts.