Food glorious food

Care Package!

“At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.”

- Oscar Wilde

One of the most important things to me is food. It is in fact, what keeps me alive and happy. So undoubtedly there was going to be a post at some point covering the tasty, and not so tasty parts of Svalbard. 

Apparently I'm always eating! 

Food (and drink) is kind of a big deal here. Most people new to Svalbard suffer with sticker shock, a phenomena where things that we can usually get cheaply are a tad more expensive than what we're used to. Here are a few examples:

• 1 litre of Milk - (£2.53)
• Block of cheese - (£9.55)
• Small pack of grapes - (£4.49)
• Loaf of bread - (£3.76)
• Bar of chocolate - (£2.69)
• 1Kg of Potatoes - (£7.67)

The reason for this is that everything has to be flown in; as a result the prices get inflated. The other issue is that sometimes weather conditions prohibit deliveries coming in; which means there can be a limited stock of particular items. Again, making the prices rise that little bit more.  A couple years ago the dock froze over so there was no bacon for over a week! It is remembered as the great bacon shortage.

You play a risky game when buying food here as well. Sometimes you get really unlucky with what you get. This Sandwich (on the right) cost me £2.70. I guess it was mostly for the bread in this situation. Seriously you only get three cuts worth of salad! Also this sandwich has not butter, two slices of ham, and two slices of cheese. 

It was still pretty good though.

If you're prepared to spend an extra 50p and walk a little further you can get a decent sandwich in the UNIS cafeteria. 

You can also see my delicious rocky road cake, only £1.00! The cafeteria is usually the best place to get food. You get can a hot plated meal, or salad, or soup and it's always really cheap. They do loads of desserts. I have eaten tiramisu during a lecture break (no regrets). They have a coffee machine that dispenses a variety of hot beverages; a lot of people use this to power through the early hours of the day. 

One of the major benefits of living here is the massive selection of alcohol. A students dream and it is all very, very cheap!

A litre of vodka is less than £10

We are however, rationed on how much we can buy. This is a throwback to when Svalbard was a mining town. The miners could only buy so much booze, to prevent them from becoming problem workers I guess.

My ration card

So the rules work something like this:

• Middle boxes are hard liquor. (2 of anything under 40% ABV or 1 of anything 40% over two months)
• Top boxes are beer (24 small cans, 12 big cans per month)
• Bottom is liquor (2 of anything under 20% per month)

Buuuuuuuut, wine and cider don't count to the ration card (and they're what I drink most of. Haha!)

IMPORTANT NOTE
The store (the only one in Svalbard) closes for 5 days over Easter and they stop stocking up on food about 4 days before. Essentials like milk, meat, and bread disappear very quickly; so make sure if you go you get what you need to tie you over!!!!

   

Take out
There is only one takeaway in Svalbard currently. KGB takeaway. Our experience with them was a little disappointing, and reviews aren't very positive. So there's still a pretty decent gap in the market for an Arctic takeaway (I'm looking at you Dominoes) 

Going out

We also like to have big friendly meals. One of our most common eats is Svalbar, a great place for food and drink. It has a free pool table and offers for students. The one we take advantage of most is the student burger. A hearty meal with a free soft drink! You can also get reindeer pizza, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Happy Svalbar

The second most common eatery is the Coal Miners. This place is a 3 minute walk away from our barracks and has an awesome atmosphere. The prices are a little higher, but the convenience and friendliness of the staff more than make up for that. We often take cards against humanity, it makes for a great icebreaker to meet people. 

Finally, we have Kroa. This place is the most expensive, but also the fanciest. If you can get a big group of people and book, you get to sit at the round table. An experience that every visitor should get. The menu is limited, but it changes regularly and they always have some adventurous dishes (e.g. mink whale). 

Kroas round table!

There is also a sushi place, but we haven't been there yet.
Guess that'll be my next update. Until then,

Ryan

Hiking: Ice Cave - Larsbreen

My second long hike was up to the Larsbreen ice cave. The little red square is roughly where the cave was this year. As it's a melt water channel in the summer it moves and changes shape. Some years its not accessible at all and when it is it can be any size. This year it was decently sized with lots of little rooms and walkways, there were two main areas. The first part was accessible to hikers without climbing gear and had some ropes installed to help with climbing (This is the bit we stayed in). The second area needed climbing gear and experience, this area i've been told drops down another 50 metres at least, if not more. 

This is a topo map of the area around the town, some of the areas people hike on foot are:

Larsbreen, Trollsteinen, Aventdalan, Sarkofagen, Longyearbreen etc. 

If you wanted to go further out you really need a snowmobile.

 The journey took us around 2 hours to get up to the ice cave and about 40 minutes to get back down. I'm a slow walker and we stopped a lot and it was uphill around 250 metres.

Walking up to the ice cave, the ridge at the top of the picture is the plateau where the ice cave is.

The cave is just a hole in the ground marker with red rods, we had helmets as some places in the cave had low ceilings and I banged my head quite a few times. 

Some of the areas were large enough for all four of us to, but some were small where we had to go one at a time. 

I tried to get lots of pictures but the camera misted over and froze and we had to put it in a hat to warm it up, I managed to get some good pictures eventually. 

The cave had tonnes of formations, some were easy to photograph as they were large. But the small delicate ones were hard to photograph due to the misty/frozen camera. You can see how small some of the gaps were. 

Some more pictures showing the area and the corridors of ice. 

Shot of Lucy as she exited one of the thinner ice corridors (with Kieran behind her), and Jamie in one of the larger ones. 

Starting back for the surface, we had climbed down quite far. Lots of the areas were down short staircases so at the bottom we were down around 30 meters or so. (The cave does go further if you want to climb with gear as explained above.)  

Near the top now, Kieran and Lucy helped me a lot. Lucy held the camera and took pictures and made sure I didn't fall backwards. Kieran mostly pulled me up, especially near the top.  

We can see light!, Jamie and Kieran had already gone up. My hands were numb by this point so I had trouble getting out as the last 3 meters has no rope. Jamie and Kieran pulled me out in the end. 

Last picture from inside the cave that Lucy took before climbing out. 

 Outside the cave, we started heading down before we ran out of light. 

The journey down was a lot faster than the way up.

The whole hike was amazing, the pictures do not do the ice cave justice. The formations were beautiful and it was cozy in there without being claustrophobic. All in all it was worth the 2 hours of walking, and hopefully I'll get a chance to look at some of the other caves nearby. This is the only big one within walking range but there are a lot within snowmobile range. 

Tips:

• Definitely need a helmet
• Make sure the gloves you bring are warm and have good grip
• Microspikes or crampons would have been a major help for us climbing out.
• A sled for the journey down would have been great. 

Thanks for reading

- Miriam