Thu
2 Sep
2021

Exact­ly today was our chan­ce for a dash fur­ther east, into nor­t­hern Hin­lo­pen Strait.

Some days just turn out bet­ter than you could have plan­ned them or even wis­hed for. Wha­les befo­re break­fast! Two Blue wha­les, and one of them was even show­ing the flu­ke seve­ral times! A polar bear during the mor­ning, and later the migh­ty cliffs of Alkef­jel­let. Not too many Brunich’s guil­l­emots left at this time of year, the­re are more Kit­ty­wa­kes than guil­l­emots. Still a lot of life, and even wit­hout birds, it would be an impres­si­ve place, after all.

Later we got our chan­ce to get an impres­si­on of the polar desert land­scape of Nord­aus­t­land, and we finis­hed the day by cele­bra­ting the crossing of the 80th par­al­lel (the third out of four in this trip, to be pre­cise).

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

Wed
1 Sep
2021

31st August / 01st Sep­tem­ber 2021 − A love­ly, even part­ly sun­ny mor­ning in nor­thwest Spits­ber­gen. We land with ease at Smee­ren­burg, which is gre­at, not only becau­se of the remains of the famous wha­ling sta­ti­on, a group of wal­ru­ses and the grand sce­n­ery, but also becau­se we have Ben with us, who was invol­ved in the excava­tions about 40 years ago! Later we got to see some of his ori­gi­nal pho­tos.

We made yet ano­ther short stop in the nor­thwest and then grab­bed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get fur­ther east and into Wood­fjord, whe­re we had a rather grey 01 Sep­tem­ber.

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