Mon
21 Jul
2014

The­re are the­se sim­ply unbe­lie­va­ble days, when things just hap­pen. Well, we can’t con­trol natu­re any­way. This mor­ning, I was quite curious what the day would bring, as it was real­ly pret­ty win­dy.

And, what hap­pen­ed? A love­ly hike up a morai­ne ridge and over some rocky hills in Lief­defjord, with the grea­test view you can ima­gi­ne. From Mona­co­b­reen to Reins­dyr­flya. Just long enough, the hike, to make me feel I had been out for a good walk.

Then, an after­noon at Mona­co­b­reen. Blue ice under a warm sun. A pie­ce of ice fal­ling down and into the water with a thun­der every once in a while. A wall of ice, 5 kilo­me­t­res long.

On the way out of the fjord, bet­ween some small islands, sud­den­ly white backs appearing on the water sur­face. Belugas! We couldn’t do much bet­ween the islands, but fur­ther north, Cap­tain Joa­chim pul­led his gre­at Belu­ga trick off again. Get ahead a bit, as clo­se to the shore as pos­si­ble, anchor down, engi­ne, gene­ra­tor and echo­lot off, no noi­se and no tal­king on deck. And then, the came. More than 50 of them, and they took hard­ly any noti­ce of our silent pre­sence. We could hear every noi­se, their breathing, ever­y­thing. The cre­a­my-white bodies com­ple­te­ly visi­ble in the water. The cal­ves dark grey.

A stun­ning expe­ri­ence. Tou­ch­ing, real­ly.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

Final­ly, a litt­le polar bear fami­ly on one of the­se small islands in Lief­defjord. They were the icing on the cake. A big, sweet cake.

I wish I could send more and bet­ter pics through this satel­li­te thing.