St Matthew Island

Arrived early this morning at our first stop, the St Matthew Island, inhabitants : artic foxes, red foxes, voles, puffins, The Snow bunting and Mckays bunting which is unique to this island. Less people have set foot on this island than climbed Everest and we will not be increasing this number today as it is considered to rough to attempt a landing, so we will have to be content with a trip along the coast in one of the small Zodiac boats that are used for these type of trips. Whilst I was on deck taking some photos of the zodiacs, Karen was presented with a bottle of Prosecco and some petit-fours to recognise today’s event, how best to celebrate a birthday when you are at the most remote US island. The weather is changing very quickly today, one moment clear then the cloud descends and the island is just a shadow. The tannoy in the room seems to have stopped working this morning (odd things happen in this cabin, yesterday the television reconfigured itself to German, eventually managed to change back) so we made sure we were ready well in advance and made our way down to the exit deck for our trip to arrive at our allotted time. We probably didn’t need to have been on time as apparently H comes before G in the American alphabet as a group of Americans were already there wanting to travel together, then getting separated and mixing up the assembled groups and such making a fuss that an English couple eventually disembarked to allow them on. Helped onto the zodiac and settled on the sides, advised not to try standing up to take pictures when going at speed, our guide ( who could easily be mistaken from Sideshow Bob in the Sampson’s) started the outboard and off we went. A few waves did break over the bow, but fortunately I was in the stern and the people in front of me saved me getting wet. After an hour back to the ship, we are now doing a circum-navigation of this and the other smaller (Halls island, don’t know if the smallest has a name) islands before we turn South-East and head for the Aleutian Islands for our next stop the day after tomorrow.Leer más