A few of the photos here are not not mine. The one above is, though. See our ship in the background? And the approaching Zodiac? (Hint: right hand side of panorama. Views in Svalbard are vast.) There should be credits on other people's work. Uncredited photos will usually be mine.
The splendor of the place cannot be explained or photographed, but I hope my photo below hints at what you will experience if you visit Svalbard. I don't think that I have ever so often felt that superlatives, in respect of the things we saw, were valid in a trip description. If you are jaded... try Svalbard.
Svalbard. North of Norway. Quite a long way north.
See the topic page (below) for where Svalbard is. (You are far from alone, if you don't know.)
If you were also on the 11-21 June 2016 Lindblad/ National Geographic adventure, I would be grateful if you were to pass on the URL of this page to other trip participants. (It can be reached with http://tinyurl.com/Svalbard2016Lindblad, in addition to the more obvious way.) Comments, corrections, additions to the gallery welcome. You would be credited for any contributed photos, and I generally reduce the resolution, thus further protecting your interests.
There is a lot of work in preparing these trip reports. When you were a kid, would you have opened Christmas presents early, if you could?
If you can't wait, some photos which will eventually be integrated into these pages in a logical manner, with text to explain them are available at the following page...
... Click the link above, and the page with those photos will open in a new tab (or window). Just close it when you are done, and you will find that this has been here all along, "underneath" the new photos page. New photos, as they become available may go to that page, or directly to final resting places.
Some more photos to give you an idea...
(To left- from novegian.net)
(To right:- from Wikipedia)
Much of our time, we were on a ship... but visits to the shore.... after a careful look for nearby polar bears.... happened too.
The ship we lived on. (There's a "topic" page for this, too. The link is further down the page.)
(Above- from Wikipedia, adapted)
This page, "index.htm" is mostly two sets of links and some "headline" images.
Most of the material on the site is in the sub-pages linked to below. There should be little overlap or duplication of links. That's good news, I hope. The bad news is that you have to work through all the links to see all the photos.
In a nutshell:
Two days in Oslo... very pleasant. (This ahead of the organized trip.)
Flew from Oslo to Svalbard's main town.
Sailed around the archipelago clockwise...
made two "excursions" out to sea, and
had many visits into magnificent fjords.
Back to Oslo, night at airport, home.
When we were in the fjords, there were often chances to paddle kayaks, or explore in zodiacs. And not infrequently, chances to land on the shore, walk around. Both in the zodiacs and on shore, we always had one of the many excellent naturalists with us to point things out, explain things. Visits to the front faces of ancient glaciers were frequent spectacular events.
The operators' biggest nightmare was the tourists' biggest hope: polar bears. Before shore landings, careful scouting was done. During shore landings, we had to stay with our naturalist and his radio and rifle. There were scouts out around us.
I am very fond of polar bears, find them lovely and benign. But they live in a food-poor world, and to them, we are nice portions of fat and protein. (That nasty Goretex is a nuisance, stuck between teeth, though.) There's been no legal hunting since before their parents were cubs, so they have no fear of humans. Speeding cars aren't ferocious or bloodthirsty... but they still kill.
I've presented the trip via two approaches. There is a chronological narrative of the trip with, pages devoted to specific days. That is achieved via the links and text immediately below here.
If you would rather, you can start the account of the trip with the topic-specific pages, and come back to the timeline pages later.
There is almost no overlap between what is in the "timeline" pages and what is in the "by topic" pages.
11th, 12th June: From home to Oslo. Day in Oslo. (Not an "important" page... but please visit someday, if only for the photos of the Vigeland sculptures digression?)
13th June: From Oslo to on board ship, on our way. Saw a "distance to" sign: 3043 km to London, 2611 km to Moscow.
14th June: 6:30am: First whales- Some fin whales... and a blue.
Afternoon: First reindeer. First trip ashore- explored the fore-shore under a huge long hillside with glacier emerging from a valley cut through it.
Eve: Visit to front of a glacier.
15th June: (and early am of 16th) Morning: Zodiac and kayak.
Not quite what we were hoping for... but promises of things to come... tracks of a bear who had climbed over the small snow covered hill. (Start at lower right hand corner, proceed to center, then straight "up".) This was at the top of a fjord where we had, as ever, nice views. Saw a seal in the distance, resting on an ice flow.
Around noon, we headed north, out away from Svalbard into the Arctic Ocean. At this time of year, these days, there is open sea between northern Svalbard and the ice around the pole. The bears need land or ice... so we had to cross the sea to investigate whether the bears on the polar ice would give us a view.
01:30am, 16th Fabulous encounter with mother polar bear with three cubs on the ice, attacking seal lair.
Yes! They cooperated. More anon. There is already some material on the separate page about bear encounters, which is also available from the "Topics" section table of contents, below.)
16th June: I find in my contemporaneous notes "3am weather- Some fog. Slight spitting rain once in a while." (I don't sleep very well, ever, but I'm not usually making notes on the weather at 3am. I can't recall why I did on this occasion!)
By 9am, though still overcast, the weather was clearing. light to very light wind. Nearly flat sea. From 10-11 we were treated to one of the many excellent lectures in the very well suited "Lounge", with its good A/V facilties.
Afternoon: Extended walk over vast "patio" of washed gravel, with surprises.
(To be expanded into page with pictures.)
17th June: Morning: Visit to bird cliffs.
Afternoon: Visit to front edge of third largest ice cap on planet...
18th June: Morning: Walks ashore over "moss fields" (tundra) lying on top of permafrost.
.
Although the top foot or so had thawed, and walking in the wet accumulated moss and humus was heavy going, beneath that was permafrost. And the cyclic freezing and thawing breaks the ground into polygonal "plates", often hexagons. We saw a nice example of that today. (Each plate was perhaps 5 m across.)
It isn't just frozen blocks of soggy moss that the physics of water's freezing and thawing can crack. Don't mess with Mother Nature. She'll win.
Afternoon: Early: Excellent lecture by Scott taking us through the taxonomy of mammals that were land living, but became marine mammals. (There were many excellent lectures... I apologise to others for the reporting of same being patchy.)
Later in afternoon: Visit to walruses on beach. (To be expanded into page with pictures.)
19th June: Last full day aboard National Geographic Explorer. And a "full" day it was.
Kayaking, Zodiac cruising, Polar Plunge.
Exceptional whale encounters. (Not at the same time as we were in the small vessels!)
Photo is of a blue whale, the largest creature ever.
In evening, Captain's Cocktails.
20th June: Outside Longyearbyen (port town) by dawn. Soon ashore.
The town of Longyearbyen- where most of the people live. Nice day exploring the town. End of day: Flew back to Oslo. Overnight at airport hotel... 280 steps from terminal. Easy! (To be expanded into page with pictures.)
(Photo is from spitsbergenoutdoorsactivities.com)
21st June: Awoke in comfortable Oslo airport hotel. 280 steps to terminal to start the "joys" of journeys home. Most left at about 11:30, on plane to Newark. My flight left about the same time. Process tedious, as ever, but uneventful, for which I was thankful... as an eye treatment was scheduled for the 23rd, and I didn't need hassle just then.
Besides the material I am trying to include in the "timeline" narrative, above, the trip had my poor brain fizzing with things I found interesting or magnificent, and hope you will enjoy reading about. The "topic" pages also include things like my discussion of the question of what I needed to pack, which doesn't really belong to a specific day.
There is almost no overlap between what is in the "timeline" pages and what is in the "by topic" pages.
To keep the entries below short, some of the descriptions are quite approximate.
The Polar Bears! It was not ALL about the polar bears... but they were a huge feature!
You went WHERE? Explains where Svalbard is.
Clothing: Staying warm. (No photos yet.)
Packing: "To bring, or not to bring... that is the question." (Brief notes) (No photos yet.)
Weather: Sunny (24 hours a day), cold, windy. (Brief notes) (No photos yet.)
Bewick: A digression, maybe, into the world of old books... but connections exist.
Our floating home: Tour of the ship, with elements of "life aboard" emerging along the way. (Still in an early form, mostly just "naming of parts" so far.)
Questions: Is the earth flat? What is a day?
Many more to come!
Arrangements: I'm quite willing to organize my own travel. For this one, though, I thought, "maybe let the experts do it".
The now legendary firm of Lindblad was just getting started 50 years ago, with pioneering tourism to the Antarctic. I was working for a man who wrote and illustrated bird books, and loved penguins, and Lindblad was how he got to see them. So I have memories from long ago about the caliber of the firm. This was my first trip with them. And I went with them in the care of Cornell's Adult University, which added to the quality of the trip. (I am lucky enough that I have traveled with CAU many times. In some respects, they made a traveler of me, by the quality of their programmes, which left me wanting more.)
The midnight sun!: When I was a Small Boy, the concept of days on end with no sunrise, no sunset fascinated me. The whole concept was just Too Cool.
So it is a little strange that it just didn't occur to me for a long time that I would experience this wondrous phenomenon for myself on this trip. Just seeing the extraordinary cliffs rising above the sea, and the undisturbed wildlife was reason enough to be going on the trip. In some ways, a visit to Svalbard is like a visit to the Galapagos.
By happy coincidence, in the weeks leading up to my trip, there were two excellent natural history programs on the TV about Svalbard. It was one of them that reminded me that I'd be experiencing the midnight sun.
Here's a little puzzle for those of you who like such things... What would be a good design for a sundial for 78 degrees north of the equator?
Meals: (Separate notes exist for other aspects of the daily routine) Food was... Excellent. (I seem to use superlatives a lot in writing this report.)
Breakfast and lunch were buffet style, with "special menus" some days. Always a varied fare, but always "safe basics", for those who didn't want anything exotic. And great care taken to accommodate people with special dietary wants and wishes. As in so many areas: Nothing was too much trouble.
At lunch, those who wished could dine in the library, where what would normally pass as a "good selection" was available, again as a buffet. It was "lighter" only because a huge selection was available in the main dining area.
In "the main dining area", there were actually two separate, adjacent areas to choose from, to accommodate moods or merely give variety.
Dinner was more formal, with menus, and waiter/ waitress service.
It was very easy to forget that everything we ate was from a "big shop", in a remote outpost of "civilization", from the start of the journey. If those responsible had under-estimated our passion for Chardonnay, there was no "popping down to the shops" to re-stock. Furthermore, though I wouldn't call myself an expert in things green, we seemed to have a remarkable supply of apparently fresh lettuce, etc. I'm sure I would have heard any helicopter delivery. How they served what they did, operating under "shop once" constraints, I can't begin to imagine.
Daily routine: (Separate notes exist regarding our meals). There was no fixed routine... but a broad pattern emerged. The organizers were too good to feed us a dull, every- day- the- same routine. Also, they through themselves upon the sword of revising, re-revising, and re-re-revising what we were doing to factor in the weather, the ever changing ice conditions, the movements of two or three other cruise ships in the general area... but always avoided, to maintain the splendor of the vast emptiness of the region. (Another ship or two not so very far away was a comfort, to thinking passengers.)
As an example... breakfast was usually available from, I think, 7 am. Available for about two hours, as I recall. The morning after we were invited to see a polar bear... with cubs!... at 01:30, breakfast was pushed to a later time.
In the morning, there would be SOMETHING. A visit to a stunning site, at least. Often with the ship anchored, and guests at least taken out and about in the Zodiacs, or given kayaks. Often with a chance to land, and walk about in the pristine wilderness. (Well... pristine other than the plastic flotsam along the tide line.)
Then lunch, during which we often relocated.
Then in the afternoon a repeat of the morning's "outings", in a new location.
Once or twice, we weren't in a magnificent fjord for the morning or afternoon "outing"... we were, say, far north of land, to visit the edge of the sea ice around the pole... where the chance of seeing polar bears was higher. Or out where the sea floor dropped from about 180 m to 600 m in a short distance... a place where for various reasons whales are often to be found.
Before dinner, in the well appointed "Lounge", which had excellent provision for displaying photos and Power Point type material, and a good sound system, and nice views, and refreshments, we usually gathered and the naturalists would make presentations... which were as amusing as they were informative. Not "lectures". The presentations usually used re-capping events and sights of the day as a core.
Excellent dinner. Bed... when you could tear yourself away from the many places for watching the amazing surroundings go by, and scanning for bears, whales, seals, birds... etc. The sun's refusal to go down was not a help to those who were tempted by the sights. The cabins had excellent black-out curtains, already pulled down by the cabin stewards, so once in your cabin, the sun wasn't to blame for late nights.
Wildlife other than bears and whales: (Birds... etc!)
Here there were thousands... tens of thousands?... more?... black guillemots (mostly) nesting. It was a magnificent sight.
Okay... not my finest photo, on technical grounds. But I have waited many, many years to see a king eider. And it did not disappoint. Not everyone is a bird-watcher, I know. But just bear with me a moment: Bird-watchers have bird books. And in them, we see pictures of birds which must be amazing. And we live with the pictures for years. And then we see the bird, in the feather...
An "art shot". Black guillemot. Restful?
Black guillemot. They often "ran across the water" like this. Swimming, too slow. Flying, too much bother. Or maybe they just liked to show off their vivid red feet and legs?
Jigsaw puzzle, anyone? (Kittiwakes)
North or south? If I could do just one pole, which would it be?
When people speak of going to a pole, I think they are usually talking about going to the south. And that, of course, has it's charms. And I haven't been there, myself, so this topic is a bit of a presumption.
No penguins in the north... no polar bears in the south.
North easier to get to! Closer to where most of my readers live, and you don't have the two day crossing, (four, after "out" and "back") across an often rough sea, to get there
I'll try to come back to this. (Too! Lots of things to come back to!) But just before I stop for now: If someone says they've been to Botswana, they probably went to the Okavango... and that is a fabulous destination. But Botswana also offers the Kalahari, and Jack's Camp will give you a fabulous taste of it. Do Jack's as an extension, if you go to Botswana!
For about eight years, up to 12 Dec 22, this page opened with "The page is evolving at the moment... in 48 hours, there will probably be more material for you.
I guess I must finally accept that new projects have pushed improving this off the back of my desk.
The superb experience Lindblad/National Geographic gave us deserves better. But I hope what is here will make you feel "I want to do that!"
Did you, earlier, decide to skip over the timeline pages? You'll miss some of my favorite photos if you don't go back and visit them now!
I hope you enjoyed the above. For reports of other trips, visit my menu of trip reports.
Use the information the link will take you to, if you wish to contact The author of these pages the author of these pages, who was just a client of Lindblad/ National Geographic/ Cornell Adult University, and does not speak for any of them, the trip organizers.
Page WILL BE been tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org. Mostly passes. There were two "unknown attributes" in Google Translate and Google+ button code. Sigh.