Sun
11 Aug
2024

I am han­ging behind with my tra­vel blog, 3 days by now. That is gene­ral­ly a good sign. The­re is just too much going on here. We have now had three days of fan­ta­stic wea­ther, so the­re are good hikes and some other love­ly stuff every day.

Fri­day mor­ning began in Kongsfjord. We had ancho­red near Blom­strand­hal­vøya. Con­side­ring the gre­at wea­ther we had, a hike across Blom­strand was an obvious choice. We went up to Irgens­fjel­let which has an ama­zing pan­o­r­amic view of all the moun­ta­ins and gla­ciers around Kongsfjord and con­tin­ued to the old marb­le mine of Ny Lon­don / Marb­le Island.

A few hours later we went into Ham­burg­buk­ta, a small “hid­den” bay on the nor­t­hern west coast.

Ein paar Stun­den spä­ter haben wir noch eine Run­de in der Ham­burg­buk­ta gedreht, eine schö­ne, etwas ver­steck­te Bucht an der nörd­li­chen West­küs­te.

Pho­to gal­lery: Blom­strand­hal­vøya – Ham­burg­buk­ta – 09th August 2024

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

Thu
8 Aug
2024

That Wed­nes­day in For­lands­und was pro­ba­b­ly the wet­test and grey­est way to start a Spits­ber­gen jour­ney you can only ima­gi­ne. But the mood was good, and that is the most important thing! Almost ever­y­bo­dy on board has alre­a­dy done at least one – seve­ral, in most cases – trips up here.

Well, at least we got to stretch legs a litt­le bit at Sar­stan­gen.

Kongsfjord wasn’t much bet­ter to start with. Alt­hough, it as most­ly dry and you could see some of the land­scape as we went around in Ny-Åle­sund.

Later the ski­es cle­ared up. We found a polar bear fami­ly in inner Kongsfjord, and as we approa­ched the Kong­s­ve­gen gla­cier, the grey clouds into a won­derful sky!

Pho­to gal­lery – For­lands­und & Kongsfjord – 07th/08th August 2024

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

Wed
7 Aug
2024

This Tues­day was the day to start the long (19 days) jour­ney on Arc­ti­ca II! A long trip with a gre­at litt­le ship, full of oppor­tu­ni­ties others can’t even dream of. And this one is a bit spe­cial even within that con­text. Almost ever­y­bo­dy on board – a small group of 12 in total, inclu­ding crew – has been to and actual­ly around Spits­ber­gen befo­re, many more than once and many actual­ly on Arc­ti­ca II, which is pret­ty cool 😎

We did the last bits and pie­ces of shop­ping befo­re depar­tu­re – a bit more than usu­al to make sure we had ever­y­thing on board for the long trip – and final­ly ever­y­thing was on board and sto­wed away and we could take off. A cou­ple of hours later, the anchor fell near Kapp Sta­ros­tin, in the ent­rance of Isfjord.

Gal­lery – Lon­gye­ar­by­en & Isfjord – 06th August 2024

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