We're at the 78th parallel, only about a 90-minute flight from the North Pole. An island the size of Ireland, Svalbard is the only country on the Travelers Century Club list that lies entirely north of the Arctic Circle.

Last night, flying up from Oslo, the sun set shortly after take-off. But about an hour into the flight, the sky grew lighter. Then the sun reappeared at about midnight and by the time we landed at two in the morning, it shone as bright as midday. Weird and wonderful.

Today John and I went dog sledding for a couple of hours. It was simply fantastic, the magnificent silence broken only by the soft jangling of the dogs' bells. Stunning scenery. We had herds of sweaters on under our snow suits so we weren't cold in the least. There were nine other guest sleds, each with one person riding and one "driving"- both positions are fun (no pun intended). Our sled was in last place, and the tour leader was in first place, followed by his twenty guests. Each sled was pulled by a team of five handsome huskies.

John had never worn a balaclava (ski-mask) before. He got it over his head at a sort of Picasso-like angle so that only part of his mouth and one eye were uncovered and didn't realize he had the thing on wrong until we'd finished the ride. Must have beeen sleep deprivation (let's hope).

A near-fiasco occurred when we stopped for a break, halfway through the ride, in an incomparably beautiful, snow-filled valley. Mountains towered on either side of us. I switched places with John, who had been seated, while he stepped behind me onto the runners. Feeling hungry, I removed a somewhat soggy ham sandwich from the plastic bag I'd brought with me. This was a mistake.

Our dogs, who had been using their break time to roll around in (and gulp copious quantities of) the snow, suddenly materialized around the sled. One of them excitedly put his front paws on the front part of the sled (which is low to the ground), so that he was standing on my legs, which were stretched out before me. He stared at me expectantly. And then another dog growled at him.

Suddenly, it looked like there was going to be a huge dog fight all around (and on) me. I was wedged so tightly into the sled (because my polar snow suit on top of about twenty layers of clothing made me look and move about as fast as Bibendum the Michelin man) that I couldn't get up without help from John. I was immediately concerned about becoming the epicentre of a canine imbroglio and instinctively chucked the ham sandwich in front of me. (It decomposed in midair into approximately ten or so smaller satellites of bread, mustard and luncheon meat.)

This was not such a hot idea either: the dogs immediately bolted forward and began entangling their tethers, straining to get at the unexpected and tantalizing meal which now lay scattered on the snow midway between our sled and the sled in front of us, just beyond their reach.

I was horrified because Karl, our tour leader, an utterly terrifying-looking, no-nonsense guy (with a beard like a yak's pelt) who's been on this island for 34 years and looks like something from the movie Deliverance, was ambling down the line of sleds checking with his guests to see if everything was okay. I was sure that he would be appalled to find his prized huskies being fed human food by American tourists.

John, at the time only able to see with his right eye, had the presence of mind to gently release the foot brake, which allowed the struggling, sandwich-crazed huskies to inch the sled forward and devour the evidence seconds before Karl arrived on the scene.

Karl was monumentally irritated to discover the dogs in such a tangle. Their lines had crossed so many times that it had produced some kind of doomed sailor's knot got horribly awry. They'd managed to pull the knots particularly tight in their efforts to reach the pieces of sandwich.

Karl stared at the mess for a long moment, unable to comprehend how the same team of dogs which had pulled his two heaviest guests for ten kilometers had managed to ball themselves up so totally in the space of only four minutes. Then, cursing under his breath in Norwegian, he spent the next ten minutes separating them and basically having to redo the entire harness.

Anyway, tomorrow's adventure is a snowmobile trek on the smooth, frozen Arctic in search of polar bears.