When you look at the travel map you will find that we skipped one of the scheduled stops ( Chignik ) of the excursion. This little ville ( about 100 inhabitants ) does currently nobody into the village because they are afraid of Covid, an experience they so far have been spared off ). To compensate for that missed experience Hurtigruten had us stay at Kukak Bay and we spend some more time at Geographic Harbor.

So we spend in comparison to the voyage a day ago 280 nautical miles on sea until we reached Unga Island with the Unga Village.
During our voyage tonight we will be leaving the Alaskan Peninsula and reach the Aleuten Islands. A region completely different in vegetation as they not have any trees and or geological different.

Woken up to another of these "wow-days": sun just started rising and by the time I sat down for breakfast to sun ☀️ was up and my morning coffee drenched in sunlight.

At this point in time Unga Island was already on the not so far horizon with other words plenty of time to marvel the scenery from the observation deck of the vessel.
Finally the "shuttle" to Ungar Island and Ungar Village started. With the zodiacs they brought as ashore with a wet landing ( wet because we have been covered up to our ankles in water - but thanks to the wellies > courtesy of Hurtigruten, our feet stayed dry. Before we humble passengers went ashore an advance group of the staff went ashore and "fenced" of the area we where allowed to roam freely.
No trees but wide lush meadows and a variety of plants. One of them ( look at my pictures ) is very common and commonly named the Alaskan Season Plant. When the upper part of the flower is in bloom then winter is not far away they say. I have to say almost all I saw indicated that winter is around the corner.
Ungar Village was left by the last people back in 1960 and has since deteriorated as the pictures proof. One can still identify the remnants of the old Lutheran Church and there are two fenced off areas, one the old Russian-Orthodox Cemetery and the other area the Lutheran one.
Both accessible but completely overgrown so it was impossible to identify individual graves. Nevertheless outside the cemeteries one can find two grave stones: one next to the shore line by an American person which was buried in 1916 and on the other side of the village an orthodox gravestone in remembrance of a person buried in 1883.
From the two hills one had fantastic views of the sea and the surrounding area.
After about 1 ½ roaming around the zodiacs shuttled us back the the vessel with a little detour along the "Bird Rock" a massive rock being the home of an abundance of birds, Puffins especially.

Another interesting animal which is at home on Ungar is the "Ungar Cow". A special breed of cow which was brought here by the Russians. The cow is at home in northwest Siberia and hence very winter hardy. With other words ideal for this part of the world as well. The Russians brought them to have milk, butter and other dairy products. They are smaller then the cows we know, come if all different colours, both male and female one have horns and most importantly they have much longer and larger intestine as they have to feed as much as possible during the short Alaskan summer to be prepared for the long winter with scarce food supply.
Unfortunately we didn't see any but their fresh cow pads in abundance.

Back onboard the "relaxing" part of the day started: a cup of coffee, my laptop on my legs at a window to write this blog post and still enjoy the view from the Explorer Lounge
of the ship. Coffee with a view……….

Departure for our next sop ( Dutch Harbour ) will be mid afternoon and with an expected ETA on 19.8.22 around 10:00 a.m

Some pictures of todays endeavors your can find here and to track my tour click here