Arrived in Barrow

Arrived in Barrow yesterday. It is amazing. There is white as far as you can see. The sea is frozen and looks the same as the land. The sky is the same too. It makes you want to just start walking off into it. Except it's so cold that the bottle of water I was holding started to freeze within 5 minutes. Apparently you acclimatise. Hope so. Went for a walk with Marie from Czech republic who's in the photo and is living in LA and had just come up the side of Alaska by ferry. Someone on a snowmachine stopped us and warned us that polar bears might be behind the blocks of ice stalking us. And the taxi driver said that if you're in a car to a polar bear's eye you look like a seal under the ice! They can run 40 miles per hour. But they shouldn't be interested in eating people unless they are very hungry and they shouldn't be very hungry. There are snowmachines for sale in the supermarket. It's more expensive than London because everything is flown in. Spent today with lots of scientists who had really nice colourful graphs. Have to find a family to stay with (I'm in a scientists hut at the moment which has wireless internet!!) and a whaling captain who will let me go out with them. They are waiting for an east wind to make a way through the ice and bring the whales. Apparently you can tell when a passage has started forming because there is a dark line in the sky and they call it sky water. I can't believe I'm here.



Flying from Anchorage to Barrow