(L) How appropriate that our great ship called "Ends of the Earth" has taken us to the end of the earth, and how glad we are that its name was changed from the original designation which was Octyabryskaya Revolutsiya.  (R) Looking through both the rear-facing and forward-facing bridge windows as we leave the prison camp and begin cruising along the Siberian coast toward Murmansk.

(L) We are requested to make a precipitous turn to port to avoid a submarine engaged in a NATO exercise. (R) We are closely observed by a Royal Navy helicopter for 15 minutes.

We are back in more southerly latitudes and as day wanes so does the sunlight. This is the end of an incredible trip, and for Yamal two days of resupply and a sailing date of two days hence, destination the North Pole.

There were so many unforgettable moments on this trip that I can't mention them all, but just to recap, there was the Russian dinner prepared for us by the ship's crew including the obligatory vodka toasts, the tour of the two reactor units and the engineering control room, a Gulag prison camp, the Neptune Festival during which King Neptune himself granted us leave to continue northward, polar bears lumbering across the ice, and the party at the Pole itself, with volleyball and dancing and a barbecue on top of 12,000 feet of water and music echoing out over 360° of that fantastic icescape. And who could forget swimming in the ship's pool with ice floes grinding against the hull and the water sloshing back and forth as the ship rolled from side to side, or flying in a helicopter over a huge and seemingly endless glacier, or seeing fifty-ton chunks of ice break and tilt up in the air alongside and go churning out behind? On the very beautiful and powerful Yamal, we travelled with relative ease and in extreme comfort to a place which many explorers and adventurers sacrificed their lives in order to reach, we saw things that have rarely been seen, and we were welcomed by and shared a truly incredible experience with a group of dedicated, competent professional people that Americans have for long thought of as our enemies, and as a result none of us, Russian or American, can ever be quite the same again.

(L) An Arctic moon shines over our return to port. (R) Sunset over the beautiful Barents Sea. (Below) A photograph by Erich Graf from Austria, the only photo not mine in this website, but I love it!

Incidentally, for anyone who might be interested, these trips are still being scheduled although the Yamal has been retired from the Arctic cruising business, to be replaced by the newest ship of the fleet, called 50 Let Pobedy or "50 Years of Victory." It doesn't have quite the ring of Yamal, but she looks like a beautiful ship. See the links below for information about Quark and Poseidon Expeditions upcoming scheduled trips to the North Pole.