Polar Expedition Day 9

Last day.  Sniff.  Today we are heading back to Longyearbyen via the East fjord, and we will stop and go ashore for the last time in the zodiacs, this time hunting for reindeer.

The artic has a very dull earthen landscape, and from a distance, it looks very brown.  However, when there are birds nesting on the cliffs above, the bird poo washes down and fertilises the land below.  From a distance, it looks green rather than brown, but it’s not until you get up close that you realise just how much colour there is.  We are surprised at the variety of plants growing, even willows, but they never grow much higher than the ground.  

It looks quite dull from a distance

close up the colours are brilliant

We walked out to a piece of land jutting out that gave a nice vantage point of the sea, and looking up to the cliff above.  The rock here looked like lots of compressed layers that were quite brittle, grey rock.  

Once we’d done with the scenery, we are heading inland a bit to loop around behind the reindeer, and try and photograph them with the more spectacular mountain landscape behind them.  A few of the group were ahead by about 10 metres, and I was just catching up to them when Natalie turned and started heading back, make the universal symbol for bear (hands making a clawing motion, lips curled in a snarl to reveal teeth).  It took a few minutes to process this information.  Huh, she’s saying there’s a bear.  A bear ???  Where ?  It turns out it was 200-300 metres away.  They had been wandering ahead and saw a reindeer come scurrying around the corner at a fast pace, followed not long after by a big white polar bear.  The bear wasn’t actually chasing the reindeer, but the reindeer wasn’t hanging around to ask questions.  The bear looked in our direction and lifted his head to smell us, but carried on wandering away from us.  

A very quick discussion was held between Mick and Rinie, with the decision made to withdraw and keep an eye on him.  We could now also head back to the zodiacs and try and “work the bear” from the water i.e. follow him and take photos.  We started to head back to the boats, a little less straggled out than we were before, all looking over our shoulders occasionally.  By now he had disappeared down a shallow gully out of sight, but was last seen still heading away from us.

We could see the birds on the shore taking flight, and wondered if he had headed down to the sea.  We snapped a few quick pictures of reindeer but didn’t dally, and went back to the zodiacs.  

We had seen another group ashore already ahead of us, although they were further away from the bear than we were, Rinie went over to them and let them know that we’d seen it and what direction it was headed.  The group was some kind of research group, and they were initially straggled out over quite a wide area.  They were armed though, as is required in Svalbard, so were not in any danger.  We went through the faff of putting on life jackets and waterproof boots, loaded into the zodiac and headed out past the shallows and back around the point to where the bear was last seen.  

He had gone down to the shore, and was spotted down by the water.    

He saw us and headed back up the rocks by the waters edge and onto the grassy area, and continued heading away from where we had been and where the other group still were.  We watched him for a while, trying to snap him as he walked along parallel to the zodiacs.  No easy task when you have a long lens and are bobbing around in the ocean, but you have to try.  

Humans - yawn !

After a few minutes he got bored with us and started to head further away from the shore out of view, but still heading away from the other group.  Rinie was in contact with them by radio and let them know his path.  When we went past though, they had wisely decided not to hang around on-shore and had headed back to wait for their pick-up.   

So the bear count is now at 7.  Rinie has never seen a bear here before, but it just shows that you need to always be prepared for the unexpected.

We got back to the ship a bit late for lunch, the crew are very tolerant of our moving meal schedules when we are out on excursions, but out stomachs – not so much.  I was hungry enough to eat a bear by the time we sat down for lunch about 1.30pm.  
We then had a tour of the engine room of the ship, but first the head engineer gave us some facts about the ship, using the model of it in the lounge to point out various features, as it's too noisy to talk in the engine room.

• carries 80 tonnes of fresh water
• 6 tanks for fuel (diesel) which can hold 220 tonnes
• can sail 24 hours a day for 2 months without stopping
• It has a boiler to make hot water, and for heating
• The main engine is old technology, it is a two stroke engine, but is reliable because it has fewer moving parts and is therefore easy to maintain
• It has a 5 cylinder in line engine, each cylinder is 31 litres for a total of 153 litres
• The engine runs at 320rpm regardless of speed, and the pitch of the propellers is used to increase or decrease speed, or to go backwards
• Before starting the engine, there is a 45 minute start up procedure they need to follow.  They run a pump for 5 minutes to bring the oil pressure up, then they start the engine and let it run for 45 minutes before they can get underway.  
• The engine is started by blowing air into a cylinder

Engine room

The plan was then to head out of the fjord towards the open ocean for a while and see if we could see some whale spouts.  It was not to be, they must have all been sleeping, and we eventually turned around about 6pm and headed back to port.  Belinda and I spent the time trying to snap Puffins, elusive little beasts that they are.

Tonight was out last meal all together as a group, so we all met in the lounge before hand for a cocktail or a mocktail, some finger food and met with all the crew to say bye and thanks.  We had dinner as usual at 7.30 and there were a few rounds of thank you’s and acknowledgements for all the hard work that Rinie and Mick had put into looking for bears, finding bears, and leading our zodiac excursions.  We even persuaded Rinie to recite a couple of poems, which turned out to be hilarious, and I was glad I had the presence of mind to video them.

There are six of the group leaving at 12:30pm for a 2:30am flight back to Oslo, and the rest of us will have one final breakfast together tomorrow morning and we have to be packed with our bags outside our rooms by 8am and we leave the ship at 9am. 

It took me ages to pack, and I didn’t start until after the midnight guys had left, so I didn’t get to bed until about 2.30am and it still took me ages to go to sleep.