We continued our journey along the Northern coast of Baffin Island. The morning was spent with more lectures and an occasional visit on deck to enjoy the views.

We made it into the Eclipse Sound around lunch time and soon anchored facing the settlement of Pond Inlet. Pond Inlet is slightly bigger than Clyde River; around 1300 people call Pond Inlet their home.

Zodiacs were made ready and the landing point was set up. This time we had a welcome committee – waiting for us … we even got a map of town to assist in our own explorations. First stop for us was in the Nattinak Visitor’s Centre, which combines a  museum and the local library. The museum is relatively small, though nicely done with loads to see and even touch – however certainly was well beyond its limits given the number of visitors.
We now had about an hour to get our own impressions of town. I was surprised by the infrastructure available … from schools (primary and high school), health center, hotel, two supermarkets – even a bus service.
I had a look around in one of the supermarkets; the selection of goods certainly was decent, prices however a bit erratic … a fresh pineapple at 8 CAD sounds fairly reasonable to me; four roles of non-brand kitchen role for a mere 16 CAD however play in a different league though. A quart (946 ml) of buttermilk set me back 3.69 CAD.

From the supermarket I had to cross the street to get to the community center for a cultural presentation which covered Inuit sports, music, dancing and a demonstration of using the traditional blubber-oil lamps. Our ethnologist added to the presentation, which was a great link back to his lecture from earlier in the day.

Back on Hanseatic it was a quick change of clothes, in time for the pre-cap, during which we were provided with an outlook of the upcoming days. We were also introduced to our ice master and got a glimpse of our first ice charts.