The nice weather in Longyearbyen didn’t follow us on the way north, because the morning was rainy. Or snowy – wet snow. We did our first zodiak excursion (or landing, as it was officially called) after breakfast, and it was rough. The wind wasn’t all bad, but having that wet snow slammed in your face… yeah this is how summer holidays should be spent!
One thing about Svalbard that a lot of people probably don’t know is that there is a lot of history here. Especially history of Arctic exploration, and partially, exploitation – a lot of hunters decimating the seal and polar bear populations. But this morning it was about the Swedish explorer Andrée, who had the crazy idea of using a hot air balloon to fly over the North Pole in 1897, and thus be the first man to ever get that far. Nansen had tried, and failed, two years before. We were standing on the very spot where they had kept the balloon while waiting for the right wind, fascinating stuff! Of course Andrée failed in his attempt (if you don’t already know the story, look it up – it’s amazing!), but I think it’s exciting to imagine a time when there were parts of the world that man had not yet visited, and the crazy and brave attempts that people made to reach those parts.
I took my camera out and it got all wet before I fired off my one and only shot of the morning. But no worries, the camera survived – the Sony A7 and the Zeiss lens have enough weather proofing to live through their first encounter with Svalbard weather. And let’s face it, even if we were miserable, the weather wasn’t really bad in Svalbard terms! Those explorers of times gone by had to endure much worse.
We spent the afternoon trying to find polar bears. It was all hands on deck, with binoculars in hand, to scout for bears. And I do mean all hands, as the passengers were encouraged to participate because even a big bear can easily disappear in this vast white landscape, so the more eyes there are looking for them, the better. Alas, we didn’t find any bears, but our guides ensured us that nobody ever finds them on the first day and he was fairly confident we would find them later, even if the sea ice has been extremely bad this year.
