Embedded Files
Day 1 was 30 May 2024
Malarif lighthouse and Sylvia Earle making its way to pick us up
Arnastapi (again), same same but different!
near Eldborg crater. what do you see?
Arctic fox (losing its winter coat) stealing an egg. From the bus en route to Latraberg. Photo courtesy John Walker.
The Látrabjarg cliffs, prettymuch 400m straight from the sea! Full of sea birds of all sorts!
The viking and the Sylvia Earle. My initial cabin was just under the ships name at the pointy end!
James, from Ireland, doing his best to look fierce! The viking shop at Þingeyri
Some expedition staff having fun at Dryandi falls
Last glimpses of Iceland
When we left the sheltered Icelandic fjords we were faced with a proper northerly storm and, apart from a brief respite in the lee of Jan Mayen, and because of the ice along the Greenland shore, we pretty much had to push straight into it for 4 days!
This video, more below, shows the waves best, I think. 6-8m apparently!
This one shows the wind best, I think. 50+ knots apparently, gusting to 75kn
So, I was in cabin 401, the foremost cabin on the starboard side, being at the pointy end it was a bit narrower that cabins further back, and pitched way more. What you see here took about 10 minutes to film successfully. If you look carefully you can see a squirt of water entering the cabin just above the towels! The ship was relatively empty, once they were aware of the leak they moved me back to 410, much less pitch. The ship had stabilisers which did a fabulous job preventing roll, else it would have been a LOT worse!
Jan Mayen is a Norwegian Island about half way between Iceland and Svalbard. Usually shrouded in cloud I was lucky to get this shot. Its pretty much glaciers and cliffs with a small settlement with 12 people! We were not granted landing rights! But it was good to be in the lee of the island for a while!
Early morning on 8 June we got our first glimpse of Svalbard
It was a pretty steep scramble to this spot a couple of hundred meters up, but the view was well worth it.
The red coats kept us safe from polar bears, with flare guns and rifles, and we were strictly kept within their perimeter!
On the sea ice, we were about 5km from the glacier front, but, through binoculars, you could "see" a polar bear (well its black nose actually!)
The walruses were plentiful, maybe even more so than the seals!
The zodiacs were happy to push through the loose sea ice, but we were still 1km from the glacier front.
The seas were not always rough!
The actual midnight sun. Svalbard is well into the Arctic at 78 degrees North.
Longyearbyen museum. As close as I was ever getting to a polar bear on this trip, unfortunately!
Entrance to the global seed bank at Longyearbyen, left. Entry prohibited! The view from and of the admin building was pretty speccy though!
Longyearbyen was a weird mix of mining town (coal), tourist village and ski hill!
This little beauty was quietly chewing the cud outside my hotel window when I woke up in Longyearbyen!
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