We were expecting pack ice through the night but it was all good, still and good sleep.
Pre breakfast Covid test for day 3. Then off to breakfast. I wasn’t sitting for long when Howard made the announcement that there is a polar bear on the port side . Dropped everything and went to check him out. Pretty far away and only really visible with binoculars .
As I eventually went back to breakfast and got some warmer clothes to go back on deck we crept ever closer to the bear for a 3 hour encounter.
I was pretty cold at one stage and needed to pee so went off quickly as the bear hadn’t moved much.
Upon my return he was so close to the ship, walked right towards us. I saw his paw prints where he was but he had already been heading back towards his old spot and beyond once I had returned from my quick pee- I couldn’t believe that I missed it!!
While this action was happening, Snowy, our birder, spotted an ivory gull. They are all white, black legs and patches around their eyes. He said it was the first one of the season.
With the pack ice and polar bear there was no planned landing and we headed off at approx. 11am for the open waters.
The ship sailed slightly more north to Karl XII-OYA. It has been described as the end of the earth as it is so far north – over 83 degrees. It is a pyramidal mountain with a long spit. The rocks here are basal of nature.
We got pretty wet going out as it is a bit choppy in the zodiacs. It wasn’t too far up to a little protected bay, where our whole zodiac only later realised that we were looking at a polar bear mid way up the face of the mountain rather than the birds above!
We all took 300 more polar bear photos in ever colder and windier conditions then went around the corner as we were headed to circumnavigate the strangely shaped island.
All of a sudden I saw what looked like light coloured rocks appearing above the surface of the water and realised they were beluga whales!!! Yeah!!!! They took a little while to appear again …about 4-5 of them in one pod!!! It included one young calf and another older calf. They swam around the bay and put on a bit of a show but not too much action.
As we were checking out the beluga, the polar bear started to move slowly down to shore, even sliding down the snowy slope. The bear first sank deep into the snow including his/ her face .
While all of this was occurring it also started to snow!!! Horizontally mind you, as the wind was pretty strong and we saw the snow front coming in. The day had been beautiful and sunny just hours before and shortly after !!!
After dinner Denise and I did our traditional sauna and then braved the cold in the jacuzzi. Never a dull moment as it snowed while we sat in the warm tub.
One reply on “Svalbard – 23 June 2022”
I have been browsing online more than 4 hours today, yet I never found
any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me.
In my view, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will be much more
useful than ever before.