It’s chilly! We’re travelling in desert - again! Hard to think of the Arctic as a desert, but with an area around 14 million square Km it is one of the largest in the world. Vastly different from the Australian outback deserts one would think, but perhaps not so different - I did see shades of the Australian outback - parched land, dunes, bare rock and land. It’s so dry and we’ve trudged through dunes - of gravel rather than sand -, and here and there hues of red, ochre and soft browns of tilted sedimentary rock many millions of years old form fascinating shapes against an ever changing sky. The light is quite fascinating - sometimes it has a nacre quality, but in 11 days the sky changed from palest blue through more than 50 shades of grey and back again over the more than 2100 km we traveled on our Svalbard Odyssey.
Almost every vista has a backdrop of snow or ice or jagged black mountain tops hung with trails of snow.
I am convinced that the coast line of this archipelago of islands is Slartibartfast’s handiwork! The deep coastal fissures had us creeping into sheltered bukta (bays), sailing into deep fjords sometimes hung with wisps of pale fog then dropping anchor, or simply drifting when the water was too deep, and then hopping into zodiacs to quietly glide right to the very face of towering, awesome glaciers.
The Svalbard archipelago where we have been travelling is a magical frozen world in the high Arctic. 60% of it is covered by glacial ice, 30% is barren rock and only 10% is vegetated. It is a raw, a very stark wilderness with a surprising range of wildlife - birds, foxes, walrus and other marine mammals, reindeer and the king of them all - the polar bear. About 3000 polar bears roam wild on the islands and inlets so when we go out in zodiacs and on shore we are accompanied by armed expedition guides. All adds to the excitement of this awesome, isolated wilderness.
I never imagined it would be so unbelievably beautiful - I find my eyes filling with tears not from the cold, although it is cold, but at times when we simply drift in the icy silence, the grandeur and beauty of this polar place is overwhelming. It has to be experienced to be understood.
Our route around the Svalbard archipelago.
First job on board is Life Boat drill. We all get rigged up with chunky life vest and squeeze into two orange pods. Very cosy.
First night out of port and we saw a fin whale. Exciting!
It was so glorious stepping out on deck and seeing glaciers, mountains all floating in a mill pond sea.
That morning I looked over the railing and saw ice floating passed. It was thrilling ..... but there was so much more to come. Wait till Greenland!
Not what you expect to see in the Arctic! We plowed through dunes of gravel on the way to see our first walruses. It was heavy going but well worth the effort.
A little bit of Oz?!
Weird walking along a beach studded with chunks of ice!
The skies were glorious, breathtaking.
Each small group of passengers whether on a walk or beach combing were accompanied by one or sometimes two armed expedition staff. This is Robyn Mundy, the deputy expedition leader, she was marvelous and very knowledgeable.
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