Tag Archives: Arctic tern

Day 5 – Not as originally planned

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Wednesday 3 September 2025 – Mother Nature played a few games with Kuba’s plans today. The idea had been to do a landing and walk to a glacier. This one, actually,

but keen eyes on the bridge had spotted a polar bear nearby.

Yes, there really is a polar bear in this picture, which gives a good idea of how keen are the eyes of the crew. Here’s a closer view.

This meant that we couldn’t land, mainly for the polar bear’s benefit, since it would have been shot if it had started to make a nuisance of itself.  So we cruised around in Zodiacs instead. On the shores of the fjord, which is called Wijderfjord (I’ll let you guess why) there was an abandoned trapper’s cabin from the days when that sort of thing was permitted.

There was plenty of bird life to be seen – the ubiquitous kittiwakes and other gulls, who found the various islets very convenient scouting posts for any possible picking on other species they could consider.

On the shore line, we saw a gang of purple sandpipers fossicking around and feasting on the region’s delicious seaweed.

There were arctic terns flitting about,

and every so often coming over to check us out.

The geology was fascinating: close-to, layers of different coloured rock made some lovely patterns;

and, far-off, we had some wonderful landscapes.

Specifically, there was a canyon for us to explore.

This river flows from Five Mile Lake; but we could only go a short distance up because there was quite a considerable current flowing out of it into the fjord. You can see what looks like rapids further up the stream in this picture.

Having cruised the canyon, we then made a landing, which I hadn’t expected,

and took a short, but somewhat exhilarating hike

up to a viewpoint,

where we got a different perspective over the canyon

and the wonderful scenery.

Kuba (left) and Gunnar are the guides that drive the Zodiacs and lead the excursions.

They are both armed and dangerous, mainly to any importunate polar bears.

On the hike, we saw some interestingly split rocks,

and some of the local vegetation.

Then we headed back to the ship.

Kuba explained that his original plan had been to do the canyon and associated landing in the afternoon, with a somewhat longer hike to Five Mile Lake.  But it wasn’t that far from where we couldn’t land earlier because of the polar bear; the bear could easily have covered the distance to the second site during the morning, so we couldn’t risk an afternoon hike there, hence the abbreviated morning walk.

Instead, for the afternoon, we moved around the corner into Woodfjorden and did a landing at Jakobsenbukta. Again, the scenery was awesome.

The shore was basically a glacier river delta, with lots of water (and driftwood).

The weather was incredibly mild, possibly as warm as 8°C, so most of us were wearing (relatively) light clothing and carrying very little.  The exception was Doina and Denis, who live and breathe (and make a living from) online content, so they were fully kitted up.

The site was not one that Kuba or Gunnar had ever visited before – they had taken a look at maps and decided that it looked promising for a short hike; having landed, they then discussed which direction we should go.

The direction they chose wasn’t a problem for most of us; we’d followed instructions to wear our rubber boots. Not everyone had, though, so there was a bit of a hold-up whilst people worked out how to cross a water-filled channel – not deeper than wellie boots, but deeper than hiking shoes!

The delta had areas of still, calm water, which made it a fantastic source of my favourite kind of image – reflections!

The view back to the ship was quite impressive, too.

Jane spotted a footprint,

which we assume came from a reindeer, as did a small pile of droppings we passed. We also passed some Campion moss

which has evolved a survival defence against being eaten by reindeer, which is one of the few animals which can digest normal moss. Thus, it being slow-growing, this clump could be quite old. (Campion, The Wonder Moss?) We were enjoined to take care and avoid walking on it and others like it.

Our walk took us towards the near ridge you can see below, with Kuba leading and Gunnar behind (so he was the rear Gunnar at this point).

However, Rolf’s footwear developed a technical problem

and so Kuba and Gunnar had another planning session and decided to split the party. Kuba led a few of the party, including Rolf, obvs, back to the landing site, where (I think he had to spill the beans on a surprise, here) they could help the ship’s crew, who were planning a bonfire.  Gunnar took charge of the rest of us and we walked on to the ridge. It’s important for the man with the gun to go first in order to be able to protect the rest of the group if need be, so Gunnar was now our forward Gunnar.

We got to the top of the ridge, which gave us a chance to take in the fantastic scenery. Kuba had explained that the triangular rock was caused (as can clearly be seen here) by two converging glacier flows.  Geologists call this shape a “horn”

and I guess the most familiar to Europeans is the Matterhorn. The other famous one is Artesonraju in Peru. You may never have heard of it (I hadn’t), but you’d recognise it as the mountain which inspired the Paramount logo. To the left of the horn above is a cirque – a circular ice field with a glacier emerging from it.  The light was great for landscape photography.

After some moments for people to take in the view

we headed back down the way we came.  Agnese, the other Italian lass, found a fossil

which Gunnar told us was strictly not to be taken away from the scene. Apparently there is a chance that baggage will be scanned to check for illicit stone or fossil removal, with fines as a penalty, so no-one took the risk. No, they didn’t. Really, officer.

We could smell the bonfire before we could see it, and then there it was,

brilliantly setup by the ship’s crew, who were doing the environment a favour by consuming some of that driftwood.

Someone had even had the idea of using driftwood to create a bridge over that awkward water-filled channel.

Everything was beautifully set up, with Anni manning the bar

 

so quite quickly we had a relaxed, party vibe going on the beach.

Russell the Viking, together with Chief Officer Morten and AB Rasmus

Gunnar and AB Malte doing competitive seesaw

Proof that two females are the equal of one male?

The evening sun gave us a marvellous backdrop.

Once back on the boat, we had yet another splendid dinner from Roger, our Swedish chef (but no muppet, he), who had cooked fish that had been caught from the boat the previous evening. And timing allowed another fishing session for those who wished to join in.

As backdrop for this, we had a rainbow

and a fabulous sunset

which I think made a fittingly splendid end to another splendid day. It may not have been as originally planned, but Kuba and the skipper between them hatched up a good plan B (and then C) so that everyone had a great day.

Kuba has a plan for the morrow, too, of course – he always has a plan. Let’s see whether circumstances allow it to proceed in its original form, eh?

Day 1 – Practice Day: Wal’R’Us

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Saturday 30 August 2025 – When someone says they’ve had a rough night, it’s normally a metaphorical statement. In our case, it was literally a rough night. Not horrendous – neither of us getting seasick or being ejected unexpectedly from our beds – but certainly not smooth. It was enough to make some of the guests seasick, one of them quite severely, poor lass. We were told later that the swell was 1.5 – 1.7 metres, which doesn’t sound much, but this is a small boat, there was quite a lot of roll in the boat’s movement, and our cabin was creaking loudly because of the swell, so sleep was a welcome but only occasional distraction from the rigours of the night.

Nonetheless, we sprang out of bed at the crack of 7am with a song on our lips, for we were now in calm conditions, and the weather for the day looked promising.

After breakfast, having popped out on to the deck to appreciate the scenery,

and OK, yes, to find out how cold it was as well (answer – not – maybe 4°C), we reacquainted ourselves with the joys of trying to remember in which order to deal with trousers, warm shirts and other layers, hats, lifejackets, flotation suits, bloody great big heavy boots, cameras and so forth:- “Practice Day”.

I’d quite forgotten how much fun this could be.

The weather was lovely, the seas were calm, and so boarding the Zodiacs was as unruffled as the sea. The plan had changed overnight, and our first excursion was to be a Zodiac cruise rather than a landing, so Gunnar had gone out early to scout for any potentially interesting sights

and we set out shortly after he returned, with all the guests fitting nicely on to two Zodiacs, with Kuba and Gunnar as the guides.

The scenery (landscape? seascape? icescape?) was lovely.

The scenery illustrates why the island (and once the whole archipelago now known as Svalbard) is called Spitzbergen. First sighted by Dutchman Willem Barentsz in 1596, Spitzbergen is Dutch for “pointy hills”.

We’d noticed before that ice is not white, as one might think from staring at it in a G&T, but can have a variety of colours; a wonderful shade of blue is common.

Kuba, our guide, plucked some ice from the waters by way of demonstration.

All the ice in the water has come from the glaciers that fringe it. Its appearance – how opaque it is – depends on how much air is in it – the deeper the bit of glacier that spawned the lump, the more compression of the snow, the less air remaining. Another factor is that ice tends to reflect blue light better than any of the other colours, so fresh ice – just uncovered, say, by bits of the glacier falling away – shows this blue colour for a while before the sun melts the surface, and “suncrust” forms, with a whiter colour. Because our conditions were so sunny and warm, there was quite some glacier calving going on – we could hear the crashes as chunks of glacier fell into the sea, even if we never saw it with our own eyes, so there was plenty of the gorgeous blue ice to be seen and photographed.

Kuba also pointed out some other glacial calling cards, like the striations in the rock caused by the ice grinding other rock against it.

One can occasionally see shards of rock still embedded in the ice,

and moraine hills,

mounds of rock and stones pushed in front of the glacier as it flows. When it recedes, it leaves the mounds behind. Kuba gave us one extraordinary nugget: Long Island, by New York City, is a moraine hill, created by the Wisconsin Glaciation between 50,000 and 150,000 years ago. It was this glaciation which also created the Great Lakes, if Wikipedia is to be believed (and I see no reason why not).

Scenery was the main attraction of the morning’s cruise, but we did see some birdlife as well. Arctic terns,

Glaucous gulls

and Arctic Skuas

were occasionally to be seen. We also found something that’s not quite a treasure but which is much sought-after by the Kinfish crew.  It’s called “black ice”, and I suppose it’s similar to the stuff that causes road accidents in the UK, but here

it’s simply ice that’s from so deep in a glacier that it’s had all the air compressed out of it, leaving it completely clear and almost invisible in the water. It is therefore suitable for putting in cocktails. Kinfish doesn’t make any of its own ice – it’s all plucked from the sea.

Returning from the Zodiac cruise, we got further confirmation, were it needed, of the level of civilisation of the organisation behind this cruise.

Twinings finest Earl Grey in (we trust) unlimited quantities.

After lunch, during which the ship repositioned itself a bit, we had a second excursion – a landing, this time, at Smeerenburg on Spitsbergen Island (the largest in the Svalbard archipelago) with just a short walk on exiting the Zodiacs. It wasn’t difficult to spot the wildlife we were hoping to encounter;

walruses, relaxing on the shore nearby. Simple as it might have been to identify the quarry, the process of getting near them was not straightforward.  Firstly, Kuba had to go ashore first to scout out the landscape and make sure that there were no polar bears around.

Then he had to brief us on the behaviour most likely to get us the photos we wanted;

basically, a cautious and quiet advance from downwind of the walruses.  Their sight is poor, but their sense of smell is keen (though obviously they can’t smell themselves – they stink!) and it would not have taken much, possibly, to scare them off into the water. So, we advanced slowly and quietly across the flotsam-strewn ground

towards where you can see the walruses right on the shoreline in the picture above.

There were a couple in the water as well.

but the ones on land seemed not to be worried by our approach.

We were in luck; quite often the walruses just basically lie inert, but we got some great pictures because these were somewhat active, mainly jockeying for position among themselves, it seemed.

I also got some video of their interactions.

Kuba explained that their food is mussels – they use their whiskers to help detect the shellfish on the sea floor and simply suck the creatures out from their shells . Apparently, one scientific expedition found a dead walrus and opened it up. They found 70kg of mussels inside the stomach – and not one single mussel shell.

We were able to get really quite close to the walruses;

30 metres is the minimum distance allowed by Norwegian regulation, apparently, and Kuba had a rangefinder with him to enforce that.

There was some birdlife as well – some (we’re reasonably sure) Red-throated Divers

and some delightful Arctic Terns fishing nearby.

There was also a historical remnant to be seen.

This is all that’s left of a “blubber oven” – there would have been several over the land at one stage – a construction to heat the cauldrons wherein walrus and whale blubber were boiled down to the oil which was so vital to life in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries – as we learned in Antarctica, whale oil was just as much a utility for heating and lighting then as electricity is to us these days.

We’d been very lucky to have benign conditions for our first day of expeditions, allowing us to practise all the various things we had to bear in mind as we left the ship. We’d got some great photos, too. The relative calm of the conditions allowed Kuba to hatch a plan that takes us much further north and can potentially lead to some exciting opportunities for close encounters with other wildlife – if our luck holds.  Stay tuned to find out whether it did!