The plane is headed in the right direction. As we begin to sweep the runway - or, rather, a short hilly area of the Arctic tundra that would be one thing - the alarm goes off, the lights above the emergency exits glow red and the roar of aircraft engines. he went back to action and filled a large cupboard. My stomach churned.
It was an exciting introduction to the far north of Quebec, in an area known as Nunavik. Comprising the upper third of the Canadian province (larger than the US state of California and twice the size of Great Britain) with broken fringes of the peninsula known as Ungava, most people do not even know it exists. But this was not always the case.
Back in 1950, the site was published in newspapers around the world and ranked as the eighth miracle in the world. Not because of the desert, and not because of any man-made structure, but because of a different aspect of the country now I was flying over enroute to pick up another gun on the runway: the Pingualuit Crater.
"The term Inuktitut refers to the skin or acne caused by extreme cold," explains Isabelle Dubois, a project coordinator for Nunavik Tourism, who visited the crater only in winter when the snow was covered with snow.
I peeked through the window to distract myself from our second arrival attempt and wondered how the moniker was worth it. The tundra here is marked by cracks, crevices and holes filled with small packets of water. Yet among the thousands of indentations, the crater called the crater stood out.
With a diameter of about 3.5km and a circle of more than 10km, it was not only its size that separates it, but also its proportions. Almost round and full of water, the hole looked like a giant had dropped a mirror together on the ground, our little Twin Otter plane that was visible on it now, seemed no more than a little dust.
With a few collisions, many alarms and a sudden and amazing stop, down, just a few miles from the edge of this curio. We lived in the Manarsulik camp, a collection of five lighted cabinets and an official camp for anyone entering Pingualuit National Park, one of the world's most remote national parks.
As we took off the plane (no carriers or staff here) and parked inside the warm rooms, I spoke to Pierre Philie, a French geographer with a strong interest in anthropology and a resident of Kangiqsujuaq (the northernmost settlement and Nunavik gate. In this local wonder). She was disillusioned with the assignment of this part of Quebec 40 years ago, fell in love with a local woman, and never left.
Philie showed me a copy of Pingualuit's black-and-white portrait. It was taken on 20 June 1943 by one of the US Army Air Force officers who witnessed it. When I wondered what the police officer was doing at that moment, Philie began to explain more about the hole.
"It first became known to anyone from the West in that year, during World War II, when pilots saw it and used it as an aid to ships. But they did not share it with the rest of the world until the war ended," he said.
When they did, in 1950, one of the first people to be amazed was an Ontario explorer named Fred W Chubb. He was convinced that the mark was caused by a volcano, which could mean that the diamonds were lying inside it. He sought the advice of the then director of the Ontario Museum, Dr. Meen, who, in turn, took him there to investigate (which is why Pingualuit soon became known as the Chubb Crater) - but the volcanic theory was eventually dismissed.
"Now we know without a doubt that it is a meteor crater," said Philie, as the sun begins to set on Lake Manarsulik, about 2.5km from Pingualuit, leaving the edge of the hole as dark as a watermark on a shiny pink horizon. . "Tomorrow we will see it."
The next day it started at sunrise by wandering among the large boulders. The others, Philie explained, were large pieces of granite and broken rock (remnants of frostbite during the last Snow Season); others were examples of impactite, formed as a result of melting during impact. The latter was darkened in ink and covered with small holes, evidenced by the fact that internal minerals leaked out of the liquid and formed bubbles during the heat and pressure of the collision.
Its impact is estimated to be 8,500 times more powerful than the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
"The impact occurred 1.4 million years ago," confirms Philie, as we climb the ladder. "If you look at the width and depth of the hole [about 400m], its impact is estimated to be 8,500 times stronger than the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima."
That fact was awe-inspiring. But finally getting to the edge and staring at the open hole in Pingualuit, where the inner pool glistened with snow covering two-thirds of it - despite being July - was even more amazing.
"Yes, the Inuit knew about it before Westerners came to look for diamonds," said Markusie Qisiiq, director and director of Pingualuit Park. "They call it Nunavik's Crystal Eye."
From where I was standing, under an unusually blue sky with many clouds as the tundra had "spots", that name seemed to be the most equal.
As we made our way along the rugged terrain around the lake, Philie gradually survived. He spoke of the clarity of the water inside - which is supplied only by rain and is thought to be the second most freshwater in the world (Lake Mashu in Japan is the most obvious); about the mystery of the Arctic char living in its midst - scientists still do not agree on how to get there as there are no outgoing streams or exits, and they have turned to ghosts to secure their lives; and with evidence showing that along with the Inuit, some people roamed here and at least a thousand years before them.