Great photography from a friends camera. An arctic tern in flight.
Friday the 10th August, the day we edged closer to the Arctic Ocean pack ice and the furthest point north of our voyage. It was a surreal day. Like being in another world with nothing but pack ice surrounding us.
A photo from the ships drone that I photographed from our TV screen. The ship looks lost in the ice. We spent one whole night here with 24 hour daylight of course.
A bearded seal and a black guillemot below. Curtesy of my photographer friend.
Mr Polar bear being very curios about what we were up to. He was ice hopping and having great difficulty heaving himself back up out of the water onto the next sheet of ice. Those bears are huge. We were lucky enough to see four adult bears, one on the last day with a cub.
The photos above and below I took at 2.30am with the sun shining. So beautiful.
And so we reached 82.41degs. Just 400 kms from the North Pole with everyone still hungry to find more Polar bears.
When you enlarge these photos you should be able to spot the bear on the ice sheet in the middle of the picture with the water pool in it.
Above was the third polar bear we saw.
Back on land again where we visited Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen. We visited the Camp Barentz in the Advent Valley to meet the working huskies who were very excited to see us and the noise of their barking was deafening. They all have an off the ground kennel to keep them off the freezing ground in the winter.
We were given a talk by the musher (dog handler) on the work of the dogs including the history of dog sledding.
Hot coffee and Norwegian waffles in Barentz Hus, a replica of the traditional round gammen built by the dutch explorers when they arrived in 1596. While we had our refreshments we listened to a presentation on polar Bears.
The landscape around Longyearbyen was very similar to the Lake Erewhon and Mt Potts areas at home.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault which is tunnelled deep into the side of this mountain. This seed vault holds more than 5,000 seeds of different plant species from all over the world with many more varieties of each. There are nearly 40,000 different varieties of beans. 156,000 varieties of both wheat and rice. The seed deposits are safe guarding the worlds food diversity and Svalbard has the best climate and favourable geological conditions for secure seed storage. It is built deep into the permafrost. The preservation of these seed deposits is to safeguard future global food supply.
The Svalbard Arctic museum was an excellent hive of information of the flora and fauna of the region. This Polar bear had sadly been shot when he was showing aggression to a human in the town of Longyearbyen some years ago. When he got to within two metres of the person it was shot dead, but lives on in display at the museum.
Arctic fox hanging in a replica cabin in the museum.
Reindeer skins.
A ringed seal. We saw a couple of these on icebergs on our travels in the ice.
Beer tasting at the worlds northern most brewery. After campaigning for over six years to lift the ban on alcohol production in the Svalbard Archipelago, Robert Johansen set up his own brewery. It was the most amazing, humorous and interesting story of how all obstacles were put in his way but he never gave up and, although still considered a small brewery they now supply Norwegian Airlines their beer supplies for flights all over the world. this was the most entertaining story I had heard in a long time.
The reindeer sticks we nibbled with our beer were very moorish.
The small and isolated town of Longyearbyen.
A screen shot showing our route. We had the most wonderful experience and I would do it again at the drop of a hat.
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