Creek Cabin

Saturday March 7

We awoke ( after a post-midnight return for the aurora viewing last night) to -15D and a windchill of -30. We spent the morning at the lodge. One of our trip leaders, Eddy, gave a talk about the aurora including myths about it. We then went into town for lunch. After lunch we admired some of the murals around town before heading out to the boreal forest to go snow-shoeing. The boreal forest has different plant and animals species than the tundra around our lodge. 

The original set of 18 murals were created during a 10-day festival in 2017. As it turned out, this was a very difficult time for the town of Churchill. The snowmelt from a major blizzard washed out the train line to Winnipeg. It took 18 months for the provincial government and the railway owner to agree on the funding for repairs. In the meanwhile the town was cut off: the only way to get supplies in was by ship, or plane which increased prices by 7-10x, and of course many things could not be sourced at all.

In the midst of this, the artists did their work, reflecting legends, natural beauty, and the harsh realities of the townspeople. Since then more murals have been added. They are a great source of color in the flat white landscape. 

Snow-shoeing in the forest was fun, including a stretch where Kevin broke the trail for the rest of us through knee deep snow. 

Tonight’s aurora viewing location was a cabin that sits on skis and is pulled out into the frozen Goose Creek. We needed to travel in a van with oversized snow treads to reach the cabin. We expected its isolation to enable extremely dark skies. The clouds filled in and the sky was actually quite bright from the reflected light off the snow. We could tell that the aurora was above the clouds, but the ice crystals in the cloud diffused their light into a vague pale green glow. 

To keep us amused while we waited for the skies to clear, Eddy “wrote words with a sparkler” with the cameras were set to long exposures. The little cabin provided a warming up spot (including hot chocolate with Baileys) and a bonfire outside added another visual focal point. The skies never did clear, which helped us to appreciate how great the previous nights viewing had been. 

Pictures: Polar bear mural (in the colors of the spring wildflowers on the tundra), deep snow shoeing trail, ice and rocks on frozen Hudson Bay, diffuse aurora, sparkler writing

Auroras

 Friday March 6

We had a leisurely morning (since the original plan had been for us to be up late last night watching lights ). It was another cloudy and unseasonably warm (about -5) day, after the overnight 3 inches of fresh powdery snow. We were pleased that an Arctic hare decided to take a nap right outside the lodge.

 After brunch in town, we spent time with a local artist, creating our own depictions of the aurora using pastels. She grew up in Churchill, moved away as a teenager, and returned in her thirties with an increased appreciation of the place. Her description of the aurora and its symbolism was moving. After our art class, we searched for a rumored arctic fox, but apparently it had moved on. 

The weather outlook was for clearing skies  (with increased wind) for the afternoon. Instead, the clouds thickened and a 30 mph NW wind blew last night’s snow into near whiteout conditions. Then just around sunset, the skies started to clear, although the wind did not abate. We quickly piled into the van to get to some sunset viewing spots before heading to dinner.

 We ate dinner in town and went straight to a sled dog property in the taiga forest to look for auroras. The trees protected us from the wind, and the aurora played across the sky for many hours. The full moon rising added another color feature.  For many of our companions, this was their first time seeing the aurora. There were oohs and ahhs and cheers and tears— and a LOT of photography. 

The pictures today are from our cell phones as the big cameras are still warming up from their 4 hours below zero. 

Pictured: the group’s artwork, our resident Arctic hare, sunset, a small selection of aurora photos

Churchill

Thursday March 5

We awoke to light snow and a stiff breeze in Winnipeg. After breakfast we boarded a charter for the two-hour flight  to Churchill. The conditions in Churchill this morning were -15 F with a windchill of -30. But the sun was warm and out of the wind it didn’t seem too bad. 

 Like Winnipeg, Churchill’s size and prosperity has shifted over the years based on changes to global trade. Winnipeg, for example, was planned as a massive railway hub, but once the Panama Canal was completed, a lot of freight diverted to that path rather than the cross-Canadian railway. This led to the growth of Vancouver and the stunting of Winnipeg’s growth. 

The civic infrastructure of Churchill was built anticipating a city of 4,000. A huge grain-exporting port was built in the 1930’s, and a joint US- Canadian military base was established after WWII. The base was closed in the 1970s and the port was closed in 2016. Ecotourism (polar bears in the fall, northern lights in the winter, belugas and wildflowers in the summer) has become the largest local industry, but the town’s permanent population hovers around 800. 

We visited the local Inuit art museum. The artifacts in the collection came largely by donation from Catholic priests and missionaries, who were often gifted the items during their work. The collection included carvings from soapstone, walrus ivory, antlers and whalebone. It was fascinating to see how porous and spongy the whalebone is; since whales do not come out on land, lighter bones help with buoyancy and swimming efficiency. 

We are staying at a small lodge outside town, to reduce the light pollution for photography. Tonight was our first outing, on the lodge grounds, to practice keeping warm and manipulating cameras in the cold and dark. It was windchill -10 when we started, not too bad… but the warmth brought with it a pretty steady snowfall. So no northern lights tonight, but a good practice with gear, and some interesting effects all the same. The cameras need to warm up overnight in a sealed bag, so some photos will come with the next day’s blog. 

Pictured: Kevin overlooking Hudson Bay (in the summer you sit here to watch belugas), the former grain elevator, a mural near the lodge, yours truly in front of the Inukshuk

Winnipeg day two

 Wednesday March 4

This morning’s plan was to visit the Art Museum, one wing of which holds a vast Inuit art collection. 

But first, we were curious about the building behind our hotel. It fills the rest of the city block and has ornate bas-relief decorations and neo-Grecian statuary on the exterior of the bottom four floors, while the 25 upper floors look to be three apartment building towers on top of the old. One of the apartment buildings has a revolving restaurant at the top. We walked the perimeter hoping for an historical marker, to no avail. So we went in, and found an elegant, gold-leaf ceilinged hallway. One of the offices was the city planning department— surely they would know the history of the building. They did not. But being Canadian, they were very helpful and took us to the landlord’s office in pursuit of information. At the landlord’s office, we met the HR director who knew at least a little of the history… it seems the building dates from about the same time as our hotel and was always a residential building. 

When we finally made it to the art gallery, we were very impressed with the extent of the Inuit art collection. The two-story foyer is dominated by a clear glass “visible vault”, arranged in columns and rows of artifacts. A kiosk allows you to look up the source of each artifact. Seeing the map of the Inuit communities across Canada was especially meaningful given our time in Nunavut last fall. 

There were two special exhibits: one by Omalluq, a female artist from Baffin Island, and the other a sculptor from the Northwest Territory, Abraham Anghik Ruben. Omalluq’s drawings reflected everyday life and the legends of the Shamans. The Ruben pieces depicted a mixture of Norse (Odin, Thor, Loki, etc) and Inuit legends. The pieces were beautiful, complex, and sometimes confusing! Most of the pieces are soapstone and quite large, some up to five feet tall. 

Our other activity for the day was to pick up our “gear” for Churchill. NatHab has parkas, snow pants, mittens, hats, sleeves and insulated snow boots for us to borrow. We will be quite the sight when fully garbed! 

We met the rest of our group for dinner; several are from Florida or California and the coldest they’ve ever been was walking in Winnipeg today— this will be interesting!

Pictured: outside and inside of Fort Garry Place, the glass elevator to the revolving restaurant, the visual vault, several Ruben pieces: Thor, Beowulf, Amergin’s Prayer (and ancient Irish legend), Sedna (the Inuit goddess of the sea).

Winnipeg

 Tuesday, March 3rd

Today was a travel day, New York to Minneapolis to Winnipeg. We don’t join our group for the trip to Churchill till tomorrow afternoon, so we spent a few hours exploring downtown Winnipeg. Our hotel, the Fort Garry, is a classic chateau-style “railroad hotel” built between 1911 and 1913. The central train station is a block away, also built in 1911. 

Winnipeg sits at The Forks, the confluence of the Red and the Assiniboine rivers, an important trading location for the First Nations and Europeans as well.  We visited a museum dedicated to the various treaties that enshrined the rights of the local nations to continue to live on their land. The posters suggested a more equitable stance than many of the US - Native American treaties. 

Winnipeg is sometimes nicknamed “winterpeg” for the long cold winter, but today was a lovely sunny 20 F. (This is unseasonably warm, of course, and Churchill will be much colder.) We walked along the frozen Red River. One side of the river was cleared as a walkway while the other lane was for skaters. It was fun to watch moms with baby strollers, fathers with small children (who can hang onto a sort of “walker” to keep them steady) and working people with their briefcases all skating. 

We also spent a couple of hours at the excellent Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The different exhibition halls covered everything from the philosophical basis for human rights, to famous issues around the world over the centuries, to the specific challenges Canada has faced at different times. Some of the exhibitions were quite grim, but all were well done and thought-provoking.

Pictured: Winnipeg from the air, Fort Garry Hotel exterior and ballroom detail, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Red River walkers and skaters. 

Final days in the Galapagos

 Thursday February 26 and Friday February 27 

We woke early Thursday morning at the Tortoise Camp after a very windy night.  It is funny how quickly we become acclimated to a new experience. When we first saw giant tortoises on Fernandina we were excited and amazed. At the tortoise camp, you could stand in one spot and count 17 of them all around you… to the point where you almost forgot to notice them, unless one sighed nearby. The sigh is their expelling air to enable them to tuck their heads and legs in under the edge of their shells; not completely the way box turtle does, but enough to protect the more tender parts. 

While others in our group enjoyed a coffee tasting from a local coffee company, we continued our search for the Painted Bill Crake, a small dark marsh dwelling bird. We had gotten glimpses of it Wednesday night but our excellent guide, Jonathan, was determined to enable us to get a photo. We saw the bird one more fleeting time and heard it several times. We have been so lucky that one of the two trip leaders is a professional birding guide! 

After breakfast on Thursday we returned to Puerto Ayora and our ship. The next scheduled stop was a sheltered bay in the east (leeward) side of the island of Santa Fe. Santa Fe counts as one of the “eastern” islands in the archipelago, which means it is older and more eroded than Isabela for example. Our plans called for snorkeling or kayaking followed by a short walk on shore in search of some new endemic species. 

The wind continued to blow from the northeast, a very unusual direction. The two hour cruise to Santa Fe was quite rough. When we arrived, the bay was also very rough as it was in the direct path of the wind (rather than in the lee of the island as with the usual southwesterly wind direction). It was unsafe even to anchor the ship there, let alone snorkel. 

In keeping with the national park rules, we proceeded to our next scheduled stop, the island of San Cristobal. This meant another three hours of rough waters. We spent the time on deck. We were rewarded with a large pod of bottlenose dolphins “bow-running” as well as some large flocks of seabirds. Unfortunately a number of our colleagues did not enjoy the afternoon very much. 

San Cristobal is home to the largest sea lion colony in the Galapagos. We walked along the boardwalk and enjoyed watching mothers and babies interact on the rocks below. On the town sidewalks near the harbor, the sea lions were everywhere, including taking over most of the benches for their own siestas. 

Friday morning was our scheduled departure from the ship, but the captain and trip leaders had a few more treats in store for us. We went on a dawn zodiac ride along the edge of a small island off the coast of San Cristobal. We watched sea lions playing in the water and sleeping on the rocks, and got one more look at great Frigatebirds and Blue-footed Boobies. 

After breakfast and departing the ship for the last time, we had an hour of free time in town before we left for the airport. Jonathan, who lives in San Cristobal and went to university there, took us to a small microbrewery run by a former national park ranger. It was well off the beaten track and a wonderful, warm, and quirky way to end our time in the Galapagos. 

Pictured: Giant Tortoise at the camp, locals sharing a bench, Male Great Frigatebird flying with a fully inflated sac, sea lions climbing over one another at the town pier, blue-footed booby posing, dolphins bow-running, endangered Galápagos Petrel

Tortoise day

 Wednesday February 25

This morning we visited the Charles Darwin Research Center (CDRC) in the town of Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz. The research center was established in 1962, shortly after the Galapagos National park was created. The purpose of the research effort, customized to each island, is to reduce the presence of invasive species and to re-establish iconic species and their necessary habitat. While the research center works with land iguanas, endangered plant species and species of birds, the largest and most visible project is their work with tortoises. 

The CDRC baseline survey in 1964 identified 15 species of tortoise across the islands, of which 3 were already extinct, and a total population of less than 10,000 animals. It is estimated that prior to the whaling era of the 18th and 19th centuries, that the population would have been closer to 200,000. Whaler’s logs document taking over 150,000 tortoises for food. In modern times the tortoises are threatened by habitat loss and the presence of introduced rats, cats, and goats on the islands. 

Tortoises lay 5-20 eggs in a pit dig in the sand near the shoreline. The eggs incubate for 4 months just by the heat of the sun. Once hatched they stay within the nest for about an additional month before they emerge. The baby tortoises are on their own once they hatch. 

The researchers collect eggs from nests on the islands where tortoises are at risk. The eggs are marked to ensure that they stay right side up, and set in a controlled environment to incubate. After the babies hatch they are raised for two years in enclosures with wire screen lids to prevent cats or rats from getting in. Then for another two years they are kept in larger open enclosures with rocks and obstacles so they learn how to navigate in the terrain of their home environment. At age five they are released to the wild. This past week, 185 tortoises were released on Floreana, the first tortoises there in many years. The released tortoises were only 80% Floreana tortoise DNA but they hope that over time as the new population reproduces the percentage will increase. 

Most of the islands have “dome shell” style tortoises; a few have “saddle shell” style. Dome tortoises forage on the ground, while Saddle tortoises have to be able to stretch their neck to reach shrubby food, enabled by the higher neck of the Saddle. The saddle style is the first kind the Europeans saw, so the word “Galapagos” is the world for “saddle” in Spanish. 

In the afternoon we drove up into the highlands to the “Tortoise Camp”. This is a 12 hectare piece of land formerly farmed, that Natural Habitat is permitted to use for conservation and ecotourism. They have already removed most of the introduced/invasive plant species (blackberry and guava in particular) and are starting to work to replant Scalesia, a giant daisy.  As the habitat improves, more tortoises is the property as a corridor for the females to get to and from the ocean shore to lay their eggs. 

Pictured: Dome and Saddle shelled tortoises, baby tortoises, some tortoise closeups, scalesia