Woodfjord
This day has been rich of experience. It started out with cruising in to Bockfjorden, where we did a hike on green tundra with flowers. The most abundant flower was the Moss Campion, regarded as the “compass flower” as it starts to grow on the southern side first and later on blooms over to the northern side.
The voyage continued into Liefdefjorden. This scenic fiord is named with the name love to reflect the passion this beautiful fiord has on travelers. Liefdefjorden is regarded as one of the most beautiful fiords on Svalbard, due to its sharp and pointy mountains surrounding the area, and the active tidal glacier we were able to cruise in front of with Zodiacs.
Polar bears are still numerous, and we saw one at Liefdefjorden and another one passing some bird islands. The best experience of the day might have been seeing a blue whale in the middle of Woodfjorden, the biggest mammal on the earth. The blue whale has been seen only 20-30 times on Svalbard in the last 30 years, and to be able to observe such a rare mammal very close to the bow of the ship is really a highlight.
As we came out in open water we decided to go for the farthest north for the trip. We reached 80°15’, where we met solid pack ice – also an impressive sight.
