September 22, 2007

• Kekerten trip

    Well we finally made it to the old abandoned whaling station....Yeah Us!!!

   

  It was a fantastic trip, with great weather. No one in our boat was overly cold. 

  The trip took about 2 hours in and a little longer back as we experienced some choppy waters on the way back home.  As you can see from the picture below, we are very happy to be finally venturing to Kekerten:

  

  We travelled with approx. 18 teachers and 4 locals.  Joavie was the official Outfitter for our trip and also our personal captain for the trip.  Roposie was the other captain who brought the rest of the gang to the Island.

  

  It was a beautiful day for a boat trip ( a little cold, but beautiful).

  

  Once we finally arrived on the island it took everyone a little while to get off their boats as we were all suited in our survival suits that made it near impossible to move!

  

  If you compare the two boats, they represent two kinds of boats found in Pang.  Ones that are ordered from the south and ones that the locals make themselves.  The blue boat closest to shore was our boat and was hand built and the one further out is all aluminum and was ordered from the south.

  

  Kim and I trying to manoeuvre in our "space suits" and winter boots amoung all the rocks.  Very stylishly I might add!

  

  Kekerten is an official national historical site and once we arrived Joavie divided us into two groups and took each group on a tour of the 20 different stations they have set up on the island.

  

  He really liked to emphasize the fact that the Scotish built better and bigger houses and buildings then the American whalers and that it was difficult for the workers to communicate with one another as they couldn't send emails!

  As we walked around the island we found many bones including this beluga whale vertebrae:

  

  The following picture shows one of the original pulley systems used to help whalers pull the whales from the water onto shore.

  

  This next picture is a winter tent that the whalers would use.  In Inuktitut it is called a qammaq.  It is made from whale bones and pieces of wood from old qammotiq and would be covered in seal skins.

  

  Here you can see the floor plan of one of the Scottish stone buildings.  One would think, hey yep that's great it's a stone building but what is significant about this building is the fact that the Scotish didn't use the local stone found on the island, they actually imported the stone from miles away!

   

  Here is one of the barrels they would fill with whale oil and load onto the ships that arrived in the summer to take it far away:

  

   Here's the location of an old tent.  They have to use stones to anchor down their tents as the land is all rocky and therefore you can't drill tent pegs into it!

  

  For those of you who read our blog last year.. Do you remember on our teacher trip how we saw bowhead whales on our way out???  Well here is a bowhead skull, just to give you an idea of the size of it!

  

  

  Here's an original anchor from one of the old whaling ships:

  

  Mike really liked this next one as it's the reminents of the old black smiths shop!

  

  This last one of Kekerten is one of the pots that they would put the whale blubber in to heat up as it would extract the oil faster, the hotter it was!

  

  And finally, as I mentioned before, our trip home was quite a bit more choppy then our trip there.  Kim, Craig and I opted to sit in the back while the rest of them whimped out and huddled in the front avoiding all the wind and water.  Here's a pic of us as we're almost home.  I must say that although we're all soaked, Craig got the brunt of it.  Oh ya, to get an idea of how choppy it was, Craig and Claus were sitting on a two by ten plank and as the boat slammed down after one of the huge waves, the board snapped and the two of them ended up on the floor!

  Anyways, here's the three of us, and remember the suits aren't supposed to be shinny!

  

  Well we hope you enjoyed the tour of Kekerten, I know we sure did!  Although we are glad to be back where the waves are small and the house is warm!

  Hope you are all having a great weekend!  Don't forget that we'd love to hear from you!

  ttyl

  M&N  

   

  • 11:32 am
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