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| Wednesday, July 2 —The Arctic Circle, Cape Dezhnev / Lorino, Russia
This morning we were awakened at 4.30 a.m. and invited to swim and drink a toast with champagne as we crossed the Arctic Circle at 66° 33’N, right on the International Date Line. From our vantage point, we were about to straddle two time zones, two continents, two major oceans, and two seas — the Chukchi and Bering. Those who had decided to sleep didn't get that wake-up call but I expect they didn't escape the ships fog horn bellowing at the exact moment we made the crossing. We returned through the Bering Strait and arrived at Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point of the Asian continent at 8 a.m. The size of the waves on landing meant we had to leave the Zodiacs from the rear and even so there were some water filled boots. Cape Dezhnev is 46 miles across from Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska. It is named after the Russian navigator Semyon Dezhnev (1605-1672) who discovered it in 1648. I trekked up to the remains of an Eskimo village where about 2000 people had lived. It later became a collective farm under the Soviets. Holding a strategic position on the Bering Strait, it was abandoned in 1976. I continued along to the remains of a lighthouse and monument in Dezhnev's honour. Leaving the cape we spotted an icebreaker preparing to attempt a journey across the top of Eurasia. In the afternoon we got ashore to visit Lorino Village where dancers, clad in traditional fur-trimmed garments, welcomed us with authentic Chukchi dances to the beat of hand-crafted drums. Lorino is a very traditional Chukchi village and home to about 1,000 residents. We learned about their marine subsistence. On this day they had been fortunate enough to catch a whale (one of the 47 they are allowed to catch per year) and they waited until our arrival to strip the meat and blubber. After being hauled out of the sea with a tractor, a brief ceremony was performed — symbolically feeding the whale tundra plants, bread, chocolate, and even a cigarette. Each family had a pail to carry away their allotment. The extra was trailered away to be stored in the tundra until needed. |
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These slideshows are in Quicktime |
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