Wednesday 19 September 2012

It's Changeover Day again!

In the early morning we reached Reykjavik. The weather was still wonderful but most of us felt a little bit sad as we had to leave the vessel today. A trip that started 14 days ago in Longyearbyen ended here in Island. It has been an unbelievable nice cruise. The weather has been always nice; mostly blue sky and nearly no wind. We saw so much wildlife, like Arctic Hares, Ermines and Polar foxes. But one of our highlights had been the Polar bear with three nearly grown up cups on an ice flow in North East Greenland National park. We still remember our long hikes in the tundra vegetation and even in snow; that means altogether – a perfect trip came to its end. We were looking forward to this trip for a long time, now it belongs to the past already, but it will always be unforgettable.
In the afternoon the new guests arrived. Now they were looking forward to a new cruise. Some of them a little bit nervous as it will be their first cruise ever; others were travelling with us before and felt home directly. After the check in and a first coffee or tea everybody had to participate in our important rescue drill. After dinner we have been invited by our Captain and his officers. Our expedition leader introduced us to her team. After all these new experiences we have been very tired and nearly everybody wanted to go to bed. But our first highlight of this cruise should wait for us already during the first night; the northern light – the Aurora borealis. Latest now we recognized that we are on an expedition cruise and not on a normal cruise liner as there was an announcement going into all cabins in the middle of the night. But of course nobody should have missed this very special nature experience.  It looked like that we shouldn´t get a lot of sleep on this cruise; but instead of sleep we could expect various new experiences and that was what we wished and paid for.