Travels to Barrow
// September 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // 2010: Adventuring
I flew to Barrow yesterday, the northernmost city in North America. Barrow is only accessible by plane and an ice road. Our maintenance director once drove a tour company van to Barrow via the ice road. He said it was a pretty scary experience. Our flight was very cloudy.
Taken on the Navajo flight into Barrow
Pilot John Sharkey and I went to Pepe’s North of the Border for a ridiculously overpriced Mexican meal in Barrow. It’s amazing that there is a REAL Mexican restaurant in the the northernmost city in North America with Mexican employees! There is also at least one Japanese restaurant with Japanese employees!
Sharkey and I opted not to pay the 100-some-odd dollars for the tour and instead gave ourselves our tour through Barrow. We took the essential picture under the whale bones by the Arctic Ocean.
Sharkey took it a step further and decided to dive into the water.
Here is a video of his crazy antics:
[click to play]
Barrow as a whole is very much a shanty town with an odd social structure. A majority of the native population in Barrow doesn’t work and receives large subsidies from the government, while most of the workers are either from different countries or researchers. The houses are dilapidated and people pay exorbitant amounts to import vehicles into Barrow to drive around on the ~2 miles of road.
