Seward, June 24th

Hi everybody,

Finally we are able to write something about our trip again. Last time we wrote you, we were on the point of going over to Barrow, at the most Northern tip of the USA. Our flight left early in the morning (6 am) and first brought us over to Dead Horse at Purdhoe where the famous Alaskan oilfields are. This is already realy an arctic area. There are no trees and only frozen lakes, packice and lots of warm dressed people. After a short stop the plane continuid to Barrow at 71+ degrees North. It was like walking into a movie. We met a very sureal area and we were the most lucky with the fact that we arribved at the same day of the start of the once a year whale festival. This is a local eskimo festival to celebrate the whalecatching that was done by the local captains anc crews to supply the whole community with meat for the winter times. Barrow is only allowed to catch 22 whales a season and actually they only caught 9 so far. The catch whales in a traditional way by chasing them in little skinnboats with a harpoonrifle and I must say that this kind of whaling being very traditional and essential for their survival is no problem for me (it is the countries that do not need the whale at all that I have a problem with).
The festival was way cool. Almost everybody in the 4000 people community showed up some time and the afternoon was spent serving out all kinds of traditional food. Everybody was welcome to join (also the about 25 tourists that were there) and eveybody shared food with us. We actually eat raw fermented in blood whaleblubber and it did not taste as bad as it sounds like. We had eskimo cakes and most of all lots of fun.
In the evening we saw the famous blanket tossing. Kyle did have himselve tossed as well and that was great fun.

The next day we had a little tour and the highlight of the day was that Kyle and I became offical members of the Polar ABear Club by diving into 29 degrees water in the packice. Way cooooooooooooooooooooooool !!!!!!

Anyhow, we are at Seward today for our last three nights before heading back to Anchorage for our last night. Tomorrow we possibly are gonne see the glaciers that fall into the ocean and hopefully also orca's, whales, sealions and sea otters.

Have a great time wherever you are

Love

Leslie, Kyle and Frans

ps: If somebody wants to visit me on a boaring airport in Atlanta on the 28th, please let me know