Day 5

A day off at last and a good one it was. The wind turned so that it is now coming from the North, which means a significant drop in temperature because of windshield factor. Tomorrow looks even worse. Wind at 40 to 60 km per hour resulting in minus 40 C temperatures. Any exposed skin will really freeze in short time. We got a preview of that today when we were out building an igloo. Suddenly one of the guys had a serious case on his nose which had turned the color of white porcelain. Luckily we were right outside the building and he was able to go inside and warm up.
Back to our igloo for a minute. Calling it an igloo might be generous. It looks like a cross between the leaning tower of Pisa and Gehry's Bilbao building.
It's definitely "amateur hour at the arctic" and we just got booed of the stage.
The absolutely funniest thing (ok maybe things are funnier up here) was that in the middle of our "construction" some tourists came by and took pictures as if we were local and actually knew what we were doing. The idea is that some time in the next 4 nights we all get a turn to sleep out in the igloo. Apparently nobody has made it through the night in the last 10 years. I'm not sure if I am ready to end that streak. I promise a picture of the finished product tomorrow.

So, today we went to town for an outing. Visited the Eskimo museum and an exhibit at the train station about the history of Churchill. Some of my group members decided to go for the dog sledding experience. I must say that the best part was watching the dogs. They are beautiful animals. The actual ride was a 10 minutes lap through the musher's back yard. All of it had a bit of a Disney ride feeling.

Tomorrow we are going out to a more remote site (45 minutes in the box sled) which means we will be taking lunch with us. Yum, frozen sandwiches! Can't take water because it will become a solid block of ice. Promises to be quite an adventure.