(Post 3 of 5)
It would be impossible to profile Longyearbyen without talking about tourism, and we wondered what the tourists themselves were talking about.

These three are from France. When I asked about their trip they became very upset about seeing the sled dogs. “We are scandalized by the conditions,” they told me. “This is the exploitation of animals for tourism. In the ads, you see clean dogs on the snow, not this. They are on pebbles, in the mud. They are dirty dogs pulling carts on the road. We aren’t militants, but now we have this picture of the Arctic. Before, we had an illusion’

Our posts from June 12 (2 days ago), show a different side of the story. We found locals who get so much joy from taking care of their dogs, and we met a lot of friendly pups.