We spent the night sailing all the way around the southern point of Spitsbergen and into the southern fjord known as Hornsund.
Gnaloden was due to be our afternoon landing site; however the 40knot winds made it much too rough and outside the company limits of safe operation so we went around the corner to a protected fjord.
A ship had to do a very quick emergency evacuation after a walking group was surprised by a bear just 30-50m away!!!! Apparently it was pretty large too…but I reckon being that close any bear would have been large!!!
So that plan was changed to another zodiac cruise at Vestra Burberbukta. This fjord was amazing in its scale with cliffs up to 1,500m high, loads of waterfalls cascading down the mounting sides, a hanging glacier and normal glaciers with great geology too boot!!
Sheila , Denise and myself were on the same Zodiac, with Howard as our guide. Whenever we have been with him he goes off exploring on a tangent, which is always good fun. Howard says …I just want to check around the corner , at the bottom of the cliffs , if we can spot any Arctic foxes. This is around the same corner that we didn’t land cause of the 40 knot winds.
Well, we held on good and got a whole lot of cold soakings with us joking and laughing about it and Howard’s driving skills as well as this being an expedition and not just a cruise .
Needless to say our adventures didn’t pay any dividends as the sea was too rough , visibility not great and we were well soaked. So we headed back to the ship all looking forward to warm showers and dry clothes !! The fox remained pretty elusive though !
