After leaving Svalbard on August 7, our only contact with humans not associated with the Polar Pioneer was a few hours of exploring a tiny town with a big name: Ittoqqortoormiit. (It’s not as hard to pronounce as it looks if you say it quickly: i-tok-a-tor-mit.)

It’s the youngest town I’ve ever set foot in, having been founded in 1924. Tourist ships visit two or three times in summer, and passengers come ashore to learn about local history and the traditional Greenlandic ways of life.

On the east coast of Greenland, overlooking the mouth of the Scoresby Sund system of fjords, this hamlet of less than 500 inhabitants is about as far off the grid as you can get. The Greenlanders who live here have electricity and satellite service including Internet connectivity.

But they have no running water or sewage system — the permafrost penetrates so deep into the ground that such infrastructure is impossible to construct. Dirt roads connect the colorful little houses and commercial buildings that climb up several hills in photogenic ranks.

Our cabin, number 505, was on deck five. It was a quiet deck and very convenient: we went up one flight of stairs to access the bridge on deck six, and went down one flight of stairs to deck four to access the bar or go out onto the bow deck and load into Zodiacs. It was also easy to step out onto the stern deck for a quick photo opp or breath of fresh air.

Our cabin was long and narrow but efficiently laid out with lots of built-in storage. I spent a lot of time sitting in my bunk reading and updating my journal, since the bridge was the only indoors public space with a good view.

Life aboard a moving boat is noisy. There’s engine noise, and sometimes noise from the crew or passengers moving around doing things, but also just a lot of creaking and rattling and groaning from the decks and bulkheads. Between the noise and the midnight sun, we were pretty sleep deprived by the end of the trip!

Our window, or porthole, sometimes framed a lovely peek-a-boo view, but it was hard to see anything other than sky unless you were standing right by it. It didn’t open, but it sure let in a lot of light.

To the left in the photo below are two hanging lockers for our jackets and the life vests we had to wear whenever we went out in the Zodiacs. The built-in desk and some small shelves above were lined with green stuff you put under area rugs to keep items we put there from moving around as the boat swayed. We kept our rubber boots and outermost rain gear, which we always wore in the Zodiacs, in the corner by the door. The glinty things mounted on the wall in the right third of the photo are glass tumblers for toothbrushing etc mounted in a custom rack; we hung our name badges on them to remind us which to use. Out of sight to the right is a locker with a bunch of shelves where we stored electronics, camera equipment, hats and gloves, etc. There were two chairs that stacked up for storage that I sometimes pulled out when I got tired of sitting in my bunk.

Here is the interior of Cabin 505 as seen from the padded bench near the window.

I never sat at the desk to write, although I probably would have used it if it had been under the porthole instead of staring at a blank wall.

The bathroom was small but the layout was efficient. The bright orange pipe is the hot water for the shower — the orange served to remind us not to touch that pipe it was so hot! The shower drain is in the middle of the floor, and you pulled a shower curtain around you and the shower pipes to keep everything else in the room dry when the shower was in use.

Polar Pioneer was our home for 13 nights and days. Our cabin was on deck 5, just below the bridge.

Our days usually started at 6:30 or 7:00 am with expedition leader Henrick’s cheerful greeting over the PA system:  “Good morning, good people.” Trish and I rolled out of our bunks groaning most mornings; a ship underway is noisy, and neither of us could get enough sleep most nights.

Trish and I had a double cabin with two lower bunks and a private bathroom. There were drawers for storage under each of our beds and under the padded bench seat in between them. We had curtains around each of our bunks, plus a blind to pull across the porthole, and sometimes we needed all of that to escape the 24-hour light!

The schedule for the rest of the day went something like this:

7-8 breakfast buffet

8:30 on deck to get into Zodiacs for an outing

12 back from our outing in time for a delicious hot lunch

1-2 find a spot in the bridge to enjoy the view, get out onto the bow for some sun, or curl up in your bunk or the bar with a book or to edit your photos

2:30 back on deck for another Zodiac outing

6:30 squeeze into the bar for a re-cap of the day, often including a mini-lecture by one of our experts on some highlight we saw

7:30 dinner

8:30 wander from bridge to bar to observation decks taking photos and talking to fellow passengers

MIDNIGHT belatedly remember that the sun doesn’t set here at this time of year and it’s time to try to get some sleep

Meals were served in two dining rooms that mirrored each other on port and starboard with the serving galley in between. Seats were not assigned, so we chose different dining companions for every meal. During and between meals, coffee and hot water for tea or cocoa was always available, and we could help ourselves to cookies and fresh fruit at all times.

The food, including the vegetarian fare that I ate most days, was excellent.

The bridge had the best view through these amazing large windows. It was open to us at all times, but we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior, and we had to stay quiet so that the helmsman and other crew could concentrate on their work. There was limited space in the bridge, but most passengers were good about taking turns and letting other people take their stations.

The bow deck was a popular spot to catch some rays and look for wildlife when we weren’t moving very fast.

The muster station for the lifeboat on the stern deck made a nice outdoor viewing area protected from the wind, although there was no place to sit.

The view from the very top deck was spectacular, but the wind generated by the boat’s own motion usually made it too cold to stay for long. Here I am enjoying the sun while the captain picks our way v-e-r-y slowly through a fjord full of icebergs.