Day 6 - Shiretoko and Sapporo Snow Festival 06 Feb 2012

This morning we will be heading to the Utoro Bay for an exciting "adventure". This is included as part of the room package we booked with the hotel; a floating ice walk! We had to wake up very early and be at the lobby to wait for the tour operator at 6:20am. Though it was only 6:20am, the sky was already rather bright. After filling up some indemnity form, we boarded the van to the Utoro Bay. It was only 5-10 mins away.








We suited up in the waterproof wet suit on top of our own clothing (just a layer of thermal underwear as we did not know that we are not supposed to wear our jacket under the wet suit so did not came prepared) to keep warm and walked down to the bay.










Getting really excited upon seeing the drift ice in the bay.






First step on a large piece of drift ice.




Looking back towards the shore.












This is the spot where everyone get to experience floating in the sea of drifting ice. The guide broke a thin part of the drift ice sheet and everyone get to go into this hole right into the sea, floating of course with the wet suit. It is an unforgettable experience and i would strongly recommend this adventure if you happened to be in Shiretoko during winter.












The following few pictures were taken from our hotel room. All these drifting ice came from Russia into this part of Hokkaido every winter.










After checkout, took the hotel shuttle bus to Shiretoko-Shari JR Station for the train to Shibecha.


















The highlight of the next train ride from Shibecha to Kushiro was on this Steam Train.
















There is only 1 cabin with a retro look (see below)




The rest of the other cabins look like the following.








Connecting to the following train at Kushiro for Sapporo. Its going to be a long train ride (about 4 hours) departing Kushiro at 4:17pm and arriving at Sapporo at 8:13pm.




After putting down our big backpack, headed down to the Sapporo Snow Festival site at Odori Park. It was almost 9pm when we reached Odori, so we were left with just an hour to explore the snow sculptures before the lights were turned off. As the weather has been warmer this year so many of the sculptures were not in their best state, with some of the smaller sculptures falling apart.


























Back to the comfortable hotel room at Keihan Hotel by about 10:15pm. This is one of the biggest room (26sqm) available at Keihan, only 1 per floor! There's no WiFi in room but only LAN internet connection, so you might want to bring along a portable WiFi router with you which is very useful in hotel that provides only LAN internet connection.