We just had a client return from an Arctic vacation this summer, here are her comments:

This summer I embarked on an 8-day adventure in the eastern Arctic with Cruise North Expeditions. The company is Inuit-owned and operated and they lived up to their slogan "Nobody gets you closer". The ship, which we boarded in Kuujjuaq, in northern Quebec on Ungava Bay, held a maximum of 122 passengers, but we were lucky and there were only 52 on our trip.

Most days we left the ship in Zodiacs at least once, sometimes twice, for hikes on shore or rides to see interesting things like the largest thick-billed murre colony in the world. As a bonus that day, we saw a polar bear swimming to shore and we sat offshore in the Zodiacs watching two of them for quite a while. All the excursions were included in the price and they always offered shorter walks for people who didn't feel up to the long walks.

Many Arctic wildflowers were in bloom in the tundra and the naturalists who accompanied us on walks told us about the birds and plants that we saw. Each evening there was a meeting to recap what we had done and seen all day and an interesting presentation by one of the staff about some aspect of the Arctic and the culture of the Inuit people.

In the dining room we had lots of time to talk with the staff and the naturalists because one or two sat with passengers at every table. There were vegetarian choices at every meal and the food was delicious. The whole atmosphere of the trip was informal and comfortable. The staff was excellent and couldn't have taken better care of us. Our three young trainees were university students from Inuit communities in Labrador.

Every day we thought it couldn't get any better, but it did! From the polar bears on the second day, the muskox on the third day, the lovely people in the Inuit communities that we visited, the walrus floating by the ship on an ice floe, to the hundred of beluga whales that swam around our Zodiacs in the estuary of the Churchill River, it was the trip of a lifetime for us.