Thursday 5th July 2007

Today we had to get up at 6am and that was a pure effort considering we didn't get to sleep until about 2:30am. The amount of light shining was still the same as when we went to sleep.

We went to reception and were briefed on what the days activities were going to be like. Group 1 then got on the coach to go to SvalSat which is one of the world's biggest commercial satellite stations. As we were driving up the mountain it was getting foggier and foggier we could barely see.

We arrived and took off our shoes (as was custom to do all over Svalbard) then went into a room where there was a massive wide screen TV. The man in charge then gave us a lecture about what SvalSat did. Most of it was very interesting, but because of the room being so warm most of the listeners fell asleep.

After the lecture we were ready to go and see one of the massive antenars (not sure if spelt right), but because it was so foggy and the buses weren't back we had to wait in case we were to be attacked by a polar bear, this was likely because 2 girls had been attacked there 3 years ago. Although Eddie and Craig didn't mind running there the man in charge still thought it was a bad idea.

We got the the antenar station and inside it was absolutely huge, they were massive moving dishes and there were lots of these all over the top of the mountain. There was a loud alarm that went off and all of a sudden the dish started moving quite fast as well which was a bit surprising. It spinned around just 2 metres above our heads.

After we came back down from the Sat station we went shopping in Lonyearbyen which was rather good fun, we bought lots of souvenirs for our friends and families. We also discovered that there was a Coop, even though people pronounced it as Co-op. We went back to the hostel and chilled out for a couple of hours then started getting ready for dinner. we had to walk into the town which was a 20 minute walk there, and a 45 minute walk back on a full stomach.

We went to this restaurant/bar that had an Arctic/African feel to it, if you can imagine that, and on our was down there we saw four reindeer which was amazing they were right in the centre of the town but when they saw a big group of people like us they quickly ran away. The waitresses brought out enough pizza the feed a small country, by the end of it we were in a pizza coma.

Back at the hostel we were told the briefing for the next day at then went away to do our video blogs and sleep. Day two down only eight more left woo hoo!