Nordaustland

Fri
25 Jul
2014

The idea was to find wal­rus­ses. And we had found them, on a flat pen­in­su­la, in the midd­le of the night. Drop­ped the anchor in a safe distance only to find out next mor­ning that almost all of them had left. Only two of them were still the­re. Pro­ba­b­ly 2 out­si­ders. Tho­se guys nobo­dy wants to have any­thing to do with.

Annoy­ing that they just dis­ap­pear! They could well have wai­ted for just ano­ther cou­ple of hours. Well, may­be it was the wind. It was admit­ted­ly bloo­dy cold and unp­lea­sant out the­re.

A few miles away, the next wal­rus pen­in­su­la. And the­re they were. May­be also the guys from the first island? Might well be. I can ima­gi­ne Wal­ly say­ing to his fel­low wal­rus­ses: „damn it, tou­rists! Not for me today. Let’s get out of here. Anyo­ne who wants to join me?“ And then, the tou­rists show up again just a few hours later …

Well, they did obvious­ly not mind. They were, as usu­al, com­ple­te­ly busy with them­sel­ves, with scrat­ching, fight­ing and making inde­cent sounds.

Later, frut­ti di mare from ano­ther time. More than 270 mil­li­on years old. Silent wit­nesses from tro­pi­cal seas of a very distant past. In unbe­lie­va­ble amounts. You could have fil­led trucks. And now, they are just lying here among­st all the the frost shat­te­red rocks: corals, bra­chio­pods, spon­ges … you name it. In the neigh­bour­hood of a gla­cier, more than 8000 squa­re kilo­me­t­res lar­ge. You know which one I mean.

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

Of cour­se, we paid a visit to its famous gla­cier front later. Again, bloo­dy cold. And bloo­dy impres­si­ve.

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