Pond Inlet, Nunavut To Pond Inlet, Nunavut Cruise

Day 1 - Pond Inlet

Arrive: Thu 08 August 2024 / Depart: Thu 08 August 2024 at 20:00

Located in northern Baffin Island Pond Inlet is a small predo¬minantly Inuit community with a population of roughly 1 ,500 inhabitants. In 1818 the British explorer John Ross named a bay in the vicinity after the English astronomer John Pond. Today Pond Inlet is considered one of Canada's "jewels of the North" thanks to several picturesque glaciers and mountain ranges nearby. Many archaeological sites of ancient Dorset and Thule peoples can be found near Pond Inlet. View less The Inuit hunted caribou, ringed and harp seals, fish, polar bears, and walrus, as well as narwhals, geese, ptarmigans and Arctic hares long before European and American whalers came here to harvest bowhead whales. Pond Inlet is also known as a major center of Inuit art especially the printmaking and stone carving.

Day 2 - Cape Hay, Bylot Island

Day 3 - Beechey Island

Arrive: Sat 10 August 2024 at 06:00 / Depart: Sat 10 August 2024 at 12:00

Beechey Island is a small island off the southwest coast of Devon Island, separated by a narrow waterway called the Barrow Strait. Captain William Edward Parry was the first European to visit the island in 1819. His lieutenant, Frederick William Beechey, named the island after his father, the artist William Beechey (1753–1839). Beechey Island played a significant role in the history of Arctic Exploration. During the winter of 1845-46, Sir John Franklin and his men camped on the island as part of their ill-fated quest to find the Northwest Passage. Mummified remains of three of Franklin’s crew were discovered, giving a better understanding of what happened before the disappearance of the expedition. In 1850 Edward Belcher used the island as a base while surveying the area. Later, in 1903, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen stopped at the island at the beginning of his successful voyage in search for the Northwest Passage. Subsequently, Beechey Island has been declared a "Territorial Historic Site" by the Northwest Territories government in 1975 and a National Historic Site of Canada in 1993. It now is part of Nunavut.

Day 3 - Devon Island

Arrive: Sat 10 August 2024 at 14:45 / Depart: Sat 10 August 2024 at 19:30

Devon Island is Canada’s sixth largest island and was first seen by Europeans in the early 17th century. The Thule culture had already settled there many centuries before, and left behind qarmat homes, made of rocks, whale bones, rock and sod walls, and skins for roofs that tell a story of over 800 years of human habitation. Other striking finds in this area are the many fossils of corals, crinoids and nautiloids that can be seen. Just across Lancaster Sound is Prince Leopold Island, a Canadian Important Bird Area, a federally listed migratory bird sanctuary, and a Key Migratory Bird Terrestrial Habitat site with large numbers of Thick-billed Murres, Northern Fulmars and Black-legged Kittiwakes that breed there.

Day 4 - Nunavut Canada

Arrive: Sun 11 August 2024 at 06:30 / Depart: Sun 11 August 2024 at 12:00

Croker Bay is an Arctic waterway in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It lies off the southern coast of Devon Island in the eastern high Arctic. Like Maxwell Bay to the west, it is an arm of Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait. The abandoned Dundas Harbour is 32.1 miles to the east

Day 4 - Dundas Harbour, Nunavut, Canada

Arrive: Sun 11 August 2024 at 15:00 / Depart: Sun 11 August 2024 at 21:00

Austere, remote and a rather severe, Devon Island is as close the closest thing to Mars on planet Earth. The rocky terrain, dry, cold climate and 14-mile wide crater on the north of the island have made it home for a team of research scientists from NASA, who live in the small research station during the Arctic summer. Other than these few men and women, Devon Island is completely unpeopled, and the largest uninhabited island in the world. There was human habitation as recently as 1951, when a Canadian Mounted Police post that had been on the island since 1924 to monitor illegal activities such as whaling closed. At 320 miles long and 80–100 miles wide, it is the largest of the Parry Islands. Dundas Harbour is found in the south of the island. Then island is set in the icy Arctic Ocean, south of Ellesmere Island and west of Baffin Bay. This make it Canada’s sixth largest island. Discovered by English explorer William Baffin in 1616, the island did not make it on to any maps until William Edward Parry’s exploration of the Arctic in 1820. Despite the desolate conditions, the island does show signs of having sustained human life as many as 3,000 years ago, with the remains of a Thule settlement dating back to 1000 A.D., including tent rings, middens and a gravesite providing testament to the fact. The island is named Talluruti in local Inuktitut language, literally translating as “a woman’s chin with tattoos on it”, as from a distance the deep crevasses resemble traditional facial tattoos.

Day 5 - Grise Fjord, Canada

Arrive: Mon 12 August 2024 at 12:00 / Depart: Mon 12 August 2024 at 19:00

Day 6 - Markison Fjord, Canada

Day 7 - Cruise Alexandra Fjord

Day 8 - Cape Constitution

Day 9 - Qaanaaq (Thule)

Arrive: Fri 16 August 2024 at 10:30 / Depart: Fri 16 August 2024 at 17:00

Qaanaaq, formerly and still popularly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world. The inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak the local Inuktun language and many also speak Kalaallisut and Danish.

Day 10 - Cape York, Greenland

Arrive: Sat 17 August 2024 at 06:00 / Depart: Sat 17 August 2024 at 11:00

Cape York is a cape on the northwestern coast of Greenland, in northern Baffin Bay

Day 11 - Pond Inlet

Arrive: Sun 18 August 2024 at 07:00 / Depart: Sun 18 August 2024

Located in northern Baffin Island Pond Inlet is a small predo¬minantly Inuit community with a population of roughly 1 ,500 inhabitants. In 1818 the British explorer John Ross named a bay in the vicinity after the English astronomer John Pond. Today Pond Inlet is considered one of Canada's "jewels of the North" thanks to several picturesque glaciers and mountain ranges nearby. Many archaeological sites of ancient Dorset and Thule peoples can be found near Pond Inlet. View less The Inuit hunted caribou, ringed and harp seals, fish, polar bears, and walrus, as well as narwhals, geese, ptarmigans and Arctic hares long before European and American whalers came here to harvest bowhead whales. Pond Inlet is also known as a major center of Inuit art especially the printmaking and stone carving.