Thu
22 Sep
2016
The start into the day was, admittedly, not really great. Rumours had it that a dead whale was recently seen beached somewhere in southern Forlandsund. It turned out to be impossible to find, maybe due to the very strong surf on the shores, which would anyway have made it completely impossible to get anywhere near it.
Later, the swell turned breakfast into something of a sportive exercise, good to improve personal balance. Unfortunately buffet and dinnerware are not really too adaptive.
It became calmer as we went into Grønfjord. The first glimpse outside there: maybe rather stay in bed ..?
But no, that’s not what we came for. And the more time we spent ashore in inner Grønfjord, the better it became. Maybe not for our mountain hiking group, who were rewarded for their physical efforts by some inside views of arctic clouds, any risk of outer dehydration being made a very remote one given current meteorological conditions.
The rain that kept the hikers wet brought a lovely rainbow over tundra and fjord for the rest of us. Wide tundra, lush and green, beach ridges, a moraine to look for fossils. As if Spitsbergen had just realized that the last impression out there in the arctic nature should be a nice one, preferably. It worked well!
In addition, some of us got a little exercise in river crossing, something that turned out to be almost satirical as some others had difficulties during similar activities in the area, while we were just doing it for the fun of it. As soon as we got back on board, a group of guides in training somewhere in inner Grønfjord called us over the radio as their were stuck between rivers with increased runoff due to recent rainfall. Well, I know those rivers from personal experience and I know that they may indeed have some entertaining value. Being nice and helpful people, we sent Uta and Timon off with two zodiacs. They returned later with the news that everybody had been transferred safely, but the approach had been a bit tricky because … it was almost too shallow even for the Zodiacs. Lol!
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Meanwhile, we rounded our trip off with visit to Barentsburg, an important and contrast-rich impression, making our Spitsbergen-experience as complete as possible in 10 days. I think we did well! Not too long before we then entered the port of Longyearbyen again.