Pyramiden!

A group of UNIS students payed to go on a boated trip to Pyramiden. It was such an amazing experience because we got to see a massive glacier beside Pyramiden! We left longyear at half 8 and it was a really rough journey once we got out of the fjord. I was really sea-sick and this was made worst when someone was actually sea-sick on me and my nice new jacket... still annoyed so we wont talk about that! When we reached the glacier, it was so huge! It was 500m high mostly, although some parts were 800m. There was bits of broken off ice in the water in front of the glacier and there was lots of seals in the surrounding water. We had a BBQ lunch out on the deck which was really tasty! It was hot dogs and chicken with lots of salad!






We then got a guided tour around Pyramiden by a Russian tour guide. The town is now a ghost town because no one lives there anymore. The people that used to live there use to mine the coal for there own purposes and not for economic reasons. It was mainly Russian miners that lived there and you could see this clearly by the designs around the area. The town was evacuated in 1998 but all the buildings including a sports hall, hotel, swimming pool and lots of houses (one was called the "crazy" house... they say it was because it was the place where all the children played...). We got to see inside the sports hall and the hotel (which had lots of rooms, a bar and a sauna). The people that used to live there imported soil from Russia so they could grow grass on the land because you cant grow much grass on the soil from Svalbard. The grass is still there, which made it look like we were actually not on Svalbard when we were there.

















We also got to see an Arctic fox! It was very interested in our bags and someones can of beer that we left outside while we were inside the sports hall! It stayed near us for a while before it got scared and ran off (without the beer!).