Malcolm Price is a narrative archaeologist, who delves into his past to unearth the stories, sensations, and secrets hidden within the multitudinous landscapes of his memories. His expeditions have led him to search the world for culture and camaraderie from pre-Tiananmen Square China, through to modern day Mexico City. This month, our erudite voyager recounts his journey to an ice hotel, where all is not quite as it seems…
Fancy a stay in an ice hotel?
I suspect that you’ve seen stunningly seductive photomagnets designed to persuade you to spend an expensive night in an ‘ice hotel’ somewhere on one of the Earth’s cold bits. (Note, straightaway, ’night’ not ‘nights’. It is unlikely that you will want to stay longer given the rather steep room rate and what you read below.) The pictures look spectacular; the reality looks spectacular; but, as we all know, looks aren’t everything and, in this case, they lie through their teeth.
So, all of your hotel for the night (not ‘nights’ remember) is hewn out of ice? Well, no. You’ve imagined walking into reception in your designer Arcticwear and being shown to your ice suite by an enchanting ice maiden (or the male equivalent, if your imagination prefers.)
Drinks will be poured for you (“no ice, thank you.”) and, magically, you will be cocooned in furry bliss for the night. Ain’t like that!
Reception, along with 70% of the complex, is insulation surrounded by something that isn’t ice, be it wood, brick, breezeblock, or asbestos sheets. You are herded, into a bog-standard eatery. The food isn’t bad and better than the dried reindeer that was offered at the end of your eco-friendly petrol-powered skidoo trip up a frozen fjord earlier.
The guide has words of advice before you head for bed. She tells you that there are no toilet facilities in the sleeping block and that if you wake up in the night needing to pee but decide to wait it out until morning your body and mind will not let you. You take this with a pinch of salt.
You now head for your ‘room’. It’s a two-metre square hole in a block of ice. The furnishings consist of a reindeer skin on the floor and a bed with a rubber mattress. (I bet that you think of reindeer as quite large but there are dogs that are bigger. Thus, the one skin on your floor is no larger than a bath mat and is going to prove useless as you try to keep your stockinged feet off the ice.) You have brought along the sleeping bag provided and follow the advice of stripping down to your thermal underwear and leaving the outer stuff on the bottom of the bed (from where you will, inevitably, kick it off onto the ice floor during the night.)
Did you wake in the night needing the loo? You did. Were you able to ignore it and go back to sleep? You were not. Trying to keep on the reindeer you struggle into all your gear and head out. You should not have been surprised to find blizzard conditions – this is The Arctic – nor that the toilets had been spitefully located so far from the ‘rooms’.
You do wonder what the log cabin next to the toilet block is for?
Eventually you get back to your bed, this time deciding not to remove any of your outer clothing other than snow boots and, lo and behold, you wake less than two hours later needing to go again! (Good move keeping all your clothes on: very foolish to have drunk so much beer the evening before.)
Eventually you reckon it’s not too early to go in search of breakfast. One of your travelling companions has the same idea. You wonder if it’s to be found in the log cabin mentioned above. You open the door onto an area about the size of four saunas and almost as hot. It is packed with almost all of the other guests. Unlike me, they had heard the guide say that if your igloo room proved too uncomfortable, you could take refuge here. Most had been cosy and warm in here for the greater part of the night!
