DAILY LIFE ONBOARD A NORTH POLE CRUISE

We are currently on an icebreaker ship en route to the North Pole. It is day five of this journey, and we have traveled from the northernmost city in the world, somewhere close to the 87th degree of latitude. The singular goal of this trip is to reach the North Pole and be one of only about a thousand people a year who get to stand there. This cruise has been unlike any other cruise we have ever been on, not only because of the scenery, but also because we haven't gotten off the ship in five days. So at this point, we've developed a bit of a routine, and we thought it'd be fun to show you how we pass the time as we're breaking ice to the North Pole. We would have gotten an F on that test. As you can see from my surroundings, we're not exactly roughing it. That behind me is a heated pool.

Good morning. I usually have a hard time convincing Kara to join me outside with her first cup of coffee. So she lays in bed and I sit out here, and then we head to breakfast.

Your head's too big.

I can't get in here.

We have just spotted our first wildlife of the trip. That is not a bird. There is a gigantic still just resting on a piece of ice out there. I'm very proud of myself. I spotted it from a long way away. There's nothing black out here, so when I saw a little black dot on the horizon, I thought it might be something. And as we got closer, it was a seal. Oh, what a good way to start the day.

I'm awake. Authenticated.

Two chocolate chip. Thank you. I'm developing some bad habits on this ship, one of which includes having pancakes for breakfast every morning. But they're so good.

I am loving these mares.

This time. Every morning is a little different. Sometimes we're outside looking for wildlife and polar bears.

Still no polar bears.

Other times, we're watching huge ice chunks break against the side of the ship. And sometimes we're here in the theater listening to a talk or a presentation. This morning is the safety briefing for our polar plunge at the North Pole.

It's a really cold temperature, so you will be just a few seconds. Usually in the waters. 10 seconds to one minute maximum. We've been coming to the gym every day because that was so loud.

I'm sorry.

Nate has set this insane, crazy physical challenge goal for himself that only Nate would do on a cruise ship. But my main reason for coming to the gym is so that I can eat more. I know that sounds really weird, but it has nothing to do with trying not to gain weight or trying to lose weight. I genuinely just love to eat and the food on this ship has been so good that I want to make the most of every single meal. And I'm just hungrier when I work out. Can anyone relate to me here? Let's do this.

I think the coal machine is broken.

I hate push ups.

What's wrong?

Can you see how smart that the.

Boat is right now?

I'm 8km into this, right up. At this point, I can almost stay on the treadmill.

Can we go tell the captain to quit turning?

So sharp. It's gonna be so hard. Good luck.

Air temperature 0 degrees Celsius, 32 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill effect minus 12 degrees Celsius or 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's it for today.

So.

So we are coming closer and closer to our gold north pole. Less than 120 nautical miles. Enjoy your meal.

That was our captain. I only ever understand about 50% of what he's saying. He'll go from French to English and sometimes I don't catch the transition. We are 120nautical miles from the North Pole, which feels relatively close at this point. Closest I've ever been.

So just out of curiosity, and because there's a scale in the Gym, it's day five. I weigh almost 71 kilos.

I weigh about 59 kilos.

Whatever the last video of the cruise is, we'll give you our final weight.

We're about to go to lunch, but I've gotten in this habit of grabbing a juice from the detox bar every day after my workout just because it's free and I can and it feels so healthy. My goal is to try all of them. Nate's trying to run, so I'm trying to try all the juices. You know, we're just goal setters.

Can you hear the wind? This is definitely the most North Poley weather we've had yet.

Normally we always try to take the stairs on a cruise ship, but you'll learn more about this physical challenge that I'm doing in the next video and you'll see why we're riding the elevator.

Okay, what do we have today? The way the buffet works is usually there's some meats and cheeses over here. This is all cold, like salady things. There's always a pasta, always some kind of meat, and always French fries. My favorite. Then the dessert is this beautiful display here. And last but not least, French cheese. So I usually start with a cold plate which is basically as many of the salads and vegetables I can fit in one bowl. And then I get a little plate of these little crunchy breads to use those croutons. Then I go back for a hot, hot plate. Half of that plate is usually fries. Their olive oil is amazing. I feel like I'm cheating on Italy, my true love. But.

Oh, thank you. They're so sweet. And once again, we are spending our time looking out the window looking for, you guessed it, polar bears.

Normally I don't associate buffet food with like high quality food, but this, this is like buffet food on another level. Also, at the age of 33, I learned that Dijon mustard comes from Dijon fr France. And if you've never had Dijon mustard from France, you're missing out. This has been life changing. Also, I've been trying not to wear my hat in the restaurant on this cruise, but we just worked out and we had to quickly get here to lunch before it closed. And anyway, I wore a hat on a cruise years and years ago and we're still getting comments about it. You would have thought I walked into that restaurant with no clothes on, the way people are acting real quick. I want to say a big thank you to Surf Shark for continuing to support our channel even when we're at the North Pole with no Internet. When we're not on an icebreaker above the Arctic Circle, we usually spend a lot of time behind our computers. And the Surfshark VPN is a great way to improve our digital life. If you've never heard of a vpn, it stands for Virtual Private Network and it encrypts all the data sent between our computer and the Internet so that no one can steal our sensitive information. But a VPN can be used for more than just security. It can also be used to unlock content that isn't available in your area. It's super easy to change the virtual location of your computer and get access to a completely new content library. The trick is to undercook the onions. I'm serious about this stuff. If you don't already have a vpn, we highly recommend Surfshark. We've been using it for over two years now and it's the only VPN to offer one account for unlimited devices. You can use our code karaandnate to get 83% off plus three extra months for free. And there's a 30 day money back guarantee so there is no risk to try it out. To get started, just click the link in the description below or scan the QR Code on the screen.

And now it is time for my second favorite part of the day. After meals, of course, our afternoon spa time. Woohoo. I don't even care when we get to the mud ball.

I cannot be happy right now.

There's eucalyptus oil in the water. Oh, my gosh. This is the best. Like, breathing in this warm steam with eucalyptus. It's just like I feel so alive right now.

And now we're gonna sit in here and we're gonna sweat and we're gonna look for polar bears. Actually, this would not be a good time for us to see one because we are almost naked and we don't have our camera, so it would actually be nice if they can wait.

Wow. 15 minutes in the sauna is quite toasty. And now from here, we move to the most unique feature I've ever seen on a cruise ship. The snow room. As if we're not surrounded by enough ice already. Okay, this is.

Here we go. Go.

Oh, my gosh. My feet.

My feet are so cold. Wow. Is this just the outdoors?

Oh, no. Wow.

This is crazy.

And I'm really, really sorry for this.

No, Nate.

No. No more. No, no, no.

Okay, okay.

All right. Well, that was a bucket list item that I didn't know I had. Snowball fight in the snow room on a cruise ship to the North Pole.

I feel like we fogged it up in here.

Yeah.

Like, it was clear when we came in, and now it's, like, steamy.

My skin is cold right now. Yeah. But my core temperature is still very warm.

Right.

Like, I think I could stay in here for 10 minutes if I needed to. It would be uncomfortable, but I think I could do it. You ready to go back?

Kiss.

How do I get out of here?

Oh, push.

So the rest of the afternoon from here has looked a little bit different every single day. Like, yesterday, I ended up turning on a documentary in our room about the ocean, and I took a nap in the middle of the day, which was great. But the ship has all kinds of fun things going on, so you don't get bored. This is our daily program that we get with the schedule. So right now they're offering a country line dancing class, which I should totally attend because I'm from Tennessee. You know, line dancing, It's a thing. The pastry chef is offering teppanyaki ice cream for tea time, which is the really fun ice cream that they freeze and roll up and looks really pretty. I see you waiting. Today I'm going to spend a little time on my computer, which I've done very little of this week and organize our footage that we've taken so far. And I actually really enjoy doing this work.

So I'm up on the front of the boat on the ninth deck, and this is probably my favorite spot on the entire ship. Just sitting up here watching the ship bust through the ice, navigate around the big chunks. At some point during the day, I usually make my way up here instead of a time lapse. I almost feel like you can appreciate it more when you see 30 minutes condensed down into 30 seconds. You can see how much work the captain is doing to navigate this ship to the north pole. You can always stay out here for so long. On days like today, Nate and I.

Chose to spend our afternoons very different.

One.

He's looking.

Oh, my gosh. Look at how he's walking.

Are you okay?

That was genuinely the strongest wind I've ever felt in my life. I've never actually been scared that I was gonna get blown off my feet, but especially when I was walking with it. Did you see that? I could, like, lean 45 degrees and not fall over. That felt like the craziest thing I've ever done in my life. And I was out there for 10 seconds. That's great. I wonder how strong it was. Oh, we can figure it out. 42 knots of wind. Wow. I have no clue what that means, but it's fast.

I don't either.

Highlight of the trip for me so far.

You're serious? You're serious.

I think you should go try.

Okay. Where did the polar bears go when the weather is crazy? Like, do they have shelter?

I have seen no shelter in the last four days.

Nobody dug me into this.

Be careful.

Oh, gosh.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow. Wow. I've never felt wind like this.

Wow.

Nature coming out into nature is one of the neatest things there is to do.

We've been taking full advantage of the free bar, so every night around this time, we come up to the observatory deck and enjoy happy hour.

Tonight, we're playing trivia with our cocktails. We're not doing very good. We haven't attended enough of the lectures or talks. It's like trying to take a test on something when you skip class. How long does a female polar bear take care of her cups? I'm going to say three years.

Black. I know that one. It helps it to retain heat. Fun fact for the day.

We did not win. We had seven out of 20. Right. We would have gotten an F on that test.

I never read. This is another one of those things. That really feels like a vacation. What's so funny is I'll get so into what I'm reading and I'll completely forget where I am. And all of a sudden I'll feel this and I'll look outside and I'll remember that I'm almost to the North Pole and it just blows my mind all over again.

It's a video. Give me the video. Okay.

Wow.

Really?

Breaking ice.

Good evening. Good evening.

You want to stay by white time? Sounds good to me. I'll have the menu. Exploration, saffron pasta.

Thank you.

Hopefully our morning workouts are offsetting some of the calories that we're consuming.

I actually took a nap instead of working out.

Oh, my God.

We are still breaking through ice.

My life just flashed before my eyes. The ship is very stable. Every once in a while, we'll hit a huge chunk of ice and the whole boat just goes like this. Almost lost the camera.

Oh.

Messing this up was very satisfying, but also felt so wrong.

I just.

Just keep waiting for one of the dishes to be like, hasn't happened yet. This is going to sound so spoiled. I feel like it's so rare when, like, a plate looks this beautiful and the taste is just as good, if not better. They've nailed it.

So we're getting navigation. We are looking less than 80 nautical miles from the North Pole.

The whole point of this cruise is to enjoy being in a part of the world that we'll probably never be in again. So after dinner, we try to take a few laps around the outside deck to let our food settle, but also just to enjoy the scenery, even if the weather's not so great like it is tonight.

You literally can't see the horizon. It's just this white mysteriousness all the way around.

Also, the first few days we were on the ship, it was, like, quite a bit of water and a little bit of ice. And now I believe we're within 24 hours of reaching the North Pole. And it's mostly ice and a little bit of water, which is what you want to see, I guess, when you're at the North Pole. There's no land at the North Pole.

There's frozen water.

It's just water. When you're standing on the North Pole, you're standing on frozen water and then more water. Think about that for a while.

So much harder to walk this way than it is the other way.

Oh, it's so calm.

It is really calm right now.

It is scary how addicted I am to my phone. Terrifying, actually. So I just did it again. I was just winding down a bed and I was scrolling through all the photos I've taken on the trip so far on my phone and all of a sudden I was staring at my email. We haven't had Internet in six days and I know that. I know I'm not gonna have a new email, but my thumb clicked on my email app without me even knowing it. And before I knew it, I'm staring at my email with obviously no new emails. I cannot tell you how many times that has happened this week. Same with Instagram, same with YouTube. It just blows my mind. After six, six days, I'm still doing it. I'm so glad we're going to be on the ship for 16 days and hopefully I can break that terrible habit. I really love the Internet. I don't want to constantly be off the grid, but times like these where I'm forced to, it just really is a wake up call. Here's a quick hack to see if you are also addicted to your phone and mindlessly click on things. Rearrange the apps that you use the most on your home screen. I took Instagram from where it usually is to the opposite end, and now every time I mindlessly click on Instagram, I pull up my calculator. So even if you don't think you're addicted to your phone or mindlessly click on apps, try rearranging and see what happens. I really don't miss the Internet at all. But you don't realize how many things you wonder about until you can't Google it. Nate and I have already had so many conversations where we kind of go back and forth guessing about some topic and I want to Google it so bad and I don't want to get to the end of this trip and not have solved those. Well, they're not arguments, but disagreements. So anytime something comes up that I want to look up, I'm writing it down. I'm kind of embarrassed about some of these. I was going to share some, but maybe not. Okay, I'll share one of them. What is the geographic North Pole versus the magnetic North Pole? I should probably figure that out before we get to the North Pole. Don't ask me why, but I have. Where is the rock from anyway? I love not having Internet. The end.

Wow.

So to my knowledge, there are only two icebreakers in the entire world that go to the North Pole. I believe we're about 60km away from reaching our destination. Destination. And the Russian nuclear icebreaker, the 50 years of victory has already been there. And they're on their way back and we're within a hundred yards. What are the chances? Also, this is the most interesting thing that everyone has seen on the horizon the last five days. Everyone on their boat is out on their balcony. Everyone on our boat is out on their balcony.

Is this not the craziest thing you've ever seen?

Crazy. I did not expect a party. I wear my retainer. Every single person on board that ship is outside. Well, they're saying, bonjour.

I don't know what the chances of this are, but it seems unlikely.

There's just something about knowing we are the only humans, like, up here for miles and miles and miles. Yeah. I feel connected to them in this weird way.

Goodbye. I don't know what you're saying.

The crazy thing is, when we were planning this trip, we were deciding between these two ships. So we could be on an old icebreaker that was built who knows when, or this brand new ship that was just launched in 2021, having a much more luxurious time. Wow. I can't believe we got to see it.

And, like, they made an announcement that we were going to pass. So I was like, oh, yeah, it'd be cool to go out there and just watch it go by. And literally every person is on their balcony, and it's like, they were so ready. And I just came out here with my robe and slippers.

If it looks like it's the middle of the day, we're meeting. It's 11:02pm Every moment feels like the middle of the day at this point. There they go.

So far, maybe the highlight of the trip, honestly.

Seriously, seeing those people right next to my eyes, they were just so happy.

Okay, it's time to go to sleep, because I think tomorrow we're gonna be at the North Pole.

See you at the North Pole.

Before you go, we wanted to say a big thank you to Swoop for helping us plan this adventure and making it possible. And also a thank you to Ponot for inviting us on board their beautiful ship. If you'd like to travel to the North Pole, or if you need help planning your next polar adventure, we'll leave links to both of these companies in the description below.