July 27, Ny-Ålesund, N78°55' W11°56'
Ny-Ålesund was a coal-mining town from 1917 through the mid-1960s. Today it largely serves as a scientific research center, with a focus on Earth sciences. There are radiotelescopes here too, which is why visitors are required to shut off WiFi and Bluetooth on their phones. (It would have been helpful if Atlas or OAT had provided instructions for common devices in advance - most people didn't know how to do this. On iPhones, for example, simply shutting off WiFi or Bluetooth from the control panel doesn't actually turn off the radios! Oh, and if you had a smartwatch, that needed to have its radios off as well.)
This would be the first and only stop where the ship would actually dock and we could walk off in street shoes. For the rest of the journey we would don waterproof boots, provided by the ship, transfer using inflatable Zodiac boats, and step out into water at the shore.
It was here that I got my first glimpse of Arctic wildlife, with an Arctic fox dashing across the field, probably looking for Arctic Tern chicks. It was also here that I began to understand that my trusty DSLR with 24-105mm zoom lens, was going to be inadequate for wildlife shots. There were a lot of people lugging Canon 200-400mm lenses that look like bazookas, including a diminuitive woman whom more than one of us thought was schlepping it around for her husband, but she looked sad and said "No, it's mine." Several others had "bridge" cameras that were smaller than DSLRs but had built-in long zoom lenses, and they got some great shots. I was so impressed with these that after I got home I bought one myself (Sony RX10 IV), and will be taking it on future trips.
Ny-Ålesund is also where Roald Amundsen began a series of airship explorations of the North Pole. The tower that he used to anchor the airship is still there, and we were going to walk up to it, but the guard staff spotted a polar bear in the area and hustled us away. At each stop, an advance team would go out to see if there were polar bears - if there were, we couldn't go, as they are very dangerous. After we landed, guards with rifles would stand watch to protect us.
Ny-Ålesund is also home to the world's northernmost post office, as well as a gift shop that many of us visited, being required to take off our shoes upon entering. On the walk back to the ship, some people ventured a bit too close to where the Arctic Terns were nesting, causing some of the Terns to be upset and dive-bomb the intruders.
July 27, Ny-London, N78°57' W12°2'
In the afternoon we stopped at Ny-London, which had been established as a marble quarry intended to rival Carrara, until it was discovered that the marble from there broke apart too easily and was unusable. Rather than pay to ship back all the mining equipment brought there, it was just abandoned in place.
This was our first "wet landing". The way it worked was that pairs of teams were called down to the "mud room" to put on their boots and parkas, as well as self-inflating flotation vests provided by Atlas. Once suited up, the people would board Zodiac boats, each one holding about a dozen passengers, and the boat would motor to the shore. One by one, you'd swing your legs over the side, step into the water (about 6 inches high at that point usually), and then walk ashore. Boarding for return was the reverse. After that pair of teams returned, the next pair would go out, and then the third. The order of teams shifted each day so that each team got a chance to go first.
There was a cabin there that had obviously been occupied in the recent past, but no one was there now.
Each time we returned to the ship after going ashore, we were instructed to walk through a "car wash" machine that would clean and disinfect the boots, so as to prevent transfer of unwanted plants/fungus/etc. to other places.
