Polar Bear

Svalbard Day 7 (back blip)
We watched this Polar Bear for two and a quarter hours today….incredible. We woke up to see that we were moored next to yet another glacier (Kongsfjord) and, after breakfast, the crew/ guides started to make preparations for us to go ashore in the tender boats for a walk. Suddenly, a Polar Bear was spotted swimming in the water in front of the boat. I don’t know how it was seen as its head was tiny. We watched it swim for awhile and then haul itself out of the water and start climbing up the rocks and along the shore (see extras). At this point the decision was made that it was too dangerous for us to land. The bear wandered high up along the shore then down to the water again. It swam across to an island, which took about 20 mins, climbed out and started eating birds eggs (I think they were Pink Footed Geese) whilst the geese made a lot of noise and hunched together. When he’d finished with the eggs on one island, he swam to another. It was an incredible morning and although the photos aren’t great due to the distance, I’ve included a few extras. The bear covered 1.5 km in half an hour at one point!

Eventually, we moved away and sailed past the bird cliffs where Black Guillemot and Black Legged Kittiwakes were nesting. We then moved on to the settlement of Ny Alesund where we spent a few hours wandering around the research station village where around 30 scientists live permanently (going up to 100 people in the summer) and visiting the local museum (see extras)
It was really interesting to learn that it used to be a mining area and it is the world’s most northerly permanent settlement. It is from here that Amunsen and Nobile set off in their airship in 1926 over the North Pole to Alaska. We wrote a couple of postcards and sent them from the local post office.

Back on board we had our final dinner as the ship set off back to Longyearbyen where we will be when we wake up tomorrow morning.