Monday 7 June 2010

FINALLY, THE KING


SATURDAY 5th of June

We woke up and had our breakfast in Raudfjorden this morning. All landscape was covered by snow and also a lot of fast ice in the fjord. It was not possible to do a landing, but suddenly everybody forgot about that, because the captain was on the loud speaker:
POLAR BEARS! Finally. Three of them, or were there four, or five? Somebody said six, so – well, they were far away, more like small yellow walking spots on the white ice.
– That was the animal I wanted to see the most, so this was really funny, said Olevarius Frostad Udsby who thought the bears looked quite big in his binocular. Olevarius is the youngest tourist on this voyage, ten years old. He is taking a lot of pictures every day and also making this little film he is going to show his friends at school when he returns.



After a while we left the bears to go even further north, to 80 degrees. We went to see Moffen, this little island north of Spitsbergen – and there we could see several groups of walruses on the shore, swimming and playing and breathing in the water, over 100 all together.
 
After a while we got a visitor on the vessel, king Neptun. He baptised the toughest of us, well, the Chinese, with ice cubes. In the afternoon we did a landing and climbed a little mountain at Ytre Norskeøya. Then we sailed south, and reached the most beautiful fjord in the world, Magdalenefjorden around midnight.

Puh, what a day! We have to learn you a Norwegian word: Ojojoj!
At the top of Ytre Norskøya, little Fram to the left. Photo: Ian Lawson