Friday, 17 June 2016

17th - Ice, ice, baby!

With wakeup and breakfast as usual times we were immediately called to the zodiacs so we could have a ride out near the glacier we had arrived at, Monacobreen at the end of Liefdefjorden. It was a beautiful view with areas and clumps of blue ice. With no reference of size, it was impossible to estimate how big it was, but we were informed that we had cast anchor 2 km away and app. 4-5 miles wide, which was hard to believe. Also, when cruising around there was a safety distance of 500m to the glacier which also was hard to visualize.





There were small and large chunks of ice floating around in the water and some of them were clear clean ice. A few of these were collected for the bar to be used in drinks.

The afternoon we moved to Mushamna in Woodfjorden to do a landing and visit/see a building owned by Sysselmannen (basically Svalbard’s ambassador). 16 people could sign up to do a photographic ride where we would cruise around looking at birds instead of going directly to land and I was lucky enough to make it onto the list. We spent close to two hours looking at birds and the highlight was spotting king eiders. When arriving on land we got a quick tour and description of the building followed by looking at 3 walruses further down the beach. After this limited tour (which I don’t mind) we returned to the ship for the rest of the day.


Black guillemot.

Drama in the air when someone wants something somebody else has (in this case a fish).

King eiders.


Arctic skua.

Common eiders.

More walruses.

Purple sandpipers.

The house of Sysselmannen.

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