Snow scooter tour

The second full day in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, we went on a snow scooter tour! Initially, I had wanted to drive a snow scooter myself and I was booked in for the full day. However, my left hand was hurting a lot. Probably due to the cold and trying to hold onto the dogsled the day before. I didn’t feel that driving a motorised vehicle was the smartest thing to do when I had barely any strength in one hand. And even though I wouldn’t have needed my left hand much, I chose to be safe, rather than upset by not being able to fully tick off that bucket list item. At first I cancelled completely, which would have been a huge mistake, but luckily I was convinced by a fellow traveller to join as a passenger on the half day tour.

First up: instructions! You have to be safe out there, so safety instructions are imperative. Then it was time to suit up. Again, many layers: thermal underwear -top and bottom-, ski pants, vest, fleecejacket, woolen scarf, wintercoat, three pairs of woolen socks, thermal overalls, woolen balaclava, helmet, boots, mittens that were woolen on the inside and leather on the outside. It took a while to put everything on! And when you’re indoors in all these layers, you’re just desperately wanting to get out to cool down a bit, hahaha.

Everybody went to their snow scooter. I sat on the back of the scooter of one of our two guides. That was pretty awesome, because his snow scooter was probably the most luxurious of all and we were in the front! We went out into the Adventdalen, which was absolutely stunning! The weather was amazing! Cold, of course, but the sky was clear, there wasn’t much wind and we could see heaps around us. We even saw reindeer! I had put hand warmers in my mittens, which helped heaps! About half way, we had a break where we enjoyed a hot drink: the same berry syrup with hot water. It was nice. 🙂 And then it was time to head back to Longyearbyen. It was getting dark already. It was probably around 1 pm when we got back.

It was epic!

Watch what happens when you throw boiling hot water into the freezing air! (slow motion/video is not mine).

 

In the evening we went out to dinner at the Coal Miners’ Bar & Grill. The place was deserted! Only a few people, besides our group. Of course we had to take our shoes/boots off before entering the restaurant. There was a crate with heaps of slippers we could use, so we had something on our feet. There wasn’t much of a choice as for the food: salad for the vegetarians, ribs for the rest. Dinner was very tasty though!