The Artic Circle is crossed! I am on the very top of the world! Among some very though ladies and gents. After some 700 kilometres on the Dalton Highway and after two days of leaving the highway as soon as a big truck came in sight, I am now in the working community of Prudhoe Bay. People here love to dress in colourful overalls – it’s a bit like on a car racing track with everybody dressing in Ferrari or BMW Racing Overalls. Except for here the overalls are less shiny and slightly oily. I am among the oil-workers!

To be honest: life up here offers little amenities. Alcohol is not sold in the whole city. No pubs. Almost no girls (well, the percentage is still better than in the consulting business). No dancing, but, yes, a big cinema. The city is not really one, rather some barracks, an airstrip and loads of trucks. No trees at all. My hotel offers full-pension for 75 Dollars – this is cheap when remembering that you are in one of the most Northern places accessible by car and that the food is really tasty. However, the hotel room, which I share with a Russian chap, is – you name it – in a barrack.

So why are people working up here you ask? Because they make one hell of money. And the best: they don’t spend any of it while being here. So after 14 days of hard work, they fly home for another 14 days and enjoy family, friends and beer.

I am as far north as I ever have been – and as far North as the Panmundo.com journey will take me. And it was worth it! The landscape after the Artic Circle is breathtakingly beautiful. The colours are intriguing, since up here it’s already autumn.  You meet fantastic people who conquer the street with bicycles, motorcycles Land-Rovers and by walking (this is a Japanese guy – who else would have the guts expect maybe for a German who has been ordered to do so?)

However, the guys who built the Dalton Highway must have been under time pressure – or the tried to cut cost as far as possible. What does an average Swiss Engineer do when his new street faces a steep mountain? Tunnel it? Or maybe lay the route in curves, so that the cars won’t have to climb a street that steep? Well, the Alaskan engineers used a straight forward approach. The highway crosses mountains without bending a bit, no matter how steep it is. And the street looks like any highway in Baghdad after an air strike of the allies. I felt so bad for Ian, the courageous cyclist I met yesterday. And then I shifted back to second gear, wondering whether I would have to drop off some stuff in order to climb that Brook Range pass.

Well, now it is time for dinner followed by the cigar Christian gave me as a good-bye present (I am not yet sure whether smoking is considered a terroristc threat or not up here). And then it will probably be time for bed, since there are not too many options other than to sleep and get up early (breakfast starts at 4.15am!).