Wood Fjord, Spitsbergen
During the night the National Geographic Explorer rounded the northern end of Spitsbergen Island in the Svalbard archipelago. At more than 80 degrees north, this put us at less than 600 nautical miles from the North Pole! We are well on our way to circumnavigating the entire island of Spitsbergen, the first time the NG Explorer has done so this season.
Early morning found us deep inside Wood Fjord, on our way to make a landing and stretch our legs a bit. Ice floes and seals passed by while we kept a sharp eye out for polar bears. After breakfast we headed ashore to explore the magnificent tundra surrounding the fjord. Many of us ventured far and wide, some of us kayaked among the bergy bits, and still others chose to get up-close and personal with the wild flowers blooming on the tundra.
Afternoon light found us pushing through ice floes on our way to inspect the Monaco Glacier. A call came from the bridge of a sighting of a small four-legged animal on one of the floes close to the glacier itself. Upon closer inspection we were all surprised and amazed to find out that the small animal was a young caribou, evidently far from the herd, its mother, and LAND! The calf swam from floe to floe, looking and listening for its kind.
Our after dinner dessert was a sighting of an adult blue whale in glass-flat water with golden light bouncing off the surrounding snow-capped mountains. This lone adult was contently feeding under water and then surfacing first on the starboard, then on the port side, prompting us all to rush from side to side of the ship. To see a blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, so far north is a treat indeed! Time and again the sound of the blow would lead our cameras to the spouting leviathan. Although the sun didn’t even come close to setting, we finally called it a night and bade our blue whale friend goodnight. Tousand takk!
