Having gone to bed after midnight (and having had trouble falling asleep), it took me a moment to figure out what’s going on when our guide was outside shouting ”A big whale! A big whale!”. But we got up and there we were on deck at 3am, shooting the plumes …
We spent the whole day in Kongsfjorden. Our first landing was also the first proper hike of the trip (if 2 km can be called proper), as we walked up a black-legged kittywake bird cliff. This was the first time I’ve seen any flowers in any significant numbers, and it was …
We did an early landing to check out more ruins related to arctic expeditions in Mosselbukta. This is the place where Nordenskiöld had to spend the winter in 1872–1873. There was very little wind, but it was snowing, so it feels even more lucky to have had sunshine yesterday with …
This is it! We were woken up after 1am, they have spotted a polar bear!! So on with the warm clothes and get the camera, and out on deck to look at that one thing that I really came here for (but had half accepted that we wouldn’t see when …
During the night, we passed the northernmost point of Spitsbergen, which means that we were 80 degrees north! I missed that, not that there would have been anything to shoot there out on the sea in overcast weather anyway. We had anchored during the early hours of the morning and …
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 …
