This morning we woke with towering spiky mountains peering in though our windows - these sharp peaked mountains gave the island of Spitsbergen its name. This particular mountain cluster we were approaching cradles a massive glacier - Ostre BurgerBukta. It was a wonderfully moody morning. I had expected a zodiac cruise but that morphed into a landing then a walk to the face of Ostre BurgerBukta. Magnificent! Life doesn’t get much better than that. The massive mountains seemed to swallow us as we chugged across a calm sea in our rubber ducky to land on a black beach strewn with sparkling chunks of ice (Diamond Beach eat your heart out!).
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| The mountains dwarfed us and our ship. Quite magnificent |
It was a superb, but rough, walk to the face of the glacier or rather the frozen melt lake near its face - that was as close as it was safe to go. Many people climbed a huge moraine ‘hill’ to view the face and frozen melt lake but we chose to walk around that moraine to clamber in quiet solitude among rocks, passing frozen wee lakes where Lindsay skipped stones!
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| The strata of the rock shards was fascinating and reminiscent of Greenland |
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| There was a lot of seaweed washed up on the beach. How it anchors itself to the rocks is intriguing |
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| People in the distance are specks in this monumental landscape |
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| We walked around the back of this large mound of glacial moraine |
After almost an hour surrounded by silence and harsh awesome beauty, the weather started to close in so Lindsay and I retraced our steps back to the landing point with snow falling gently all around us. Magical!
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| Scenes don't get much better than this |
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| Phil, the beach captain, standing guard |
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| This is the kind of solitude we love - the two of us tramping together in silence |
Once in the zodiac, our lovely driver, Leonie, surprised us by taking us on a little cruise to where the glacier debouched into the sea. The water in front of the glacier was an almost transparent skirt of Nilas ice - a thin sheet of new sea ice (yes it was salty!). That means of course that there had been no recent calvings. A wonderful and fitting last excursion.
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| We were greeted back on board with warm spiced tea - very welcome |
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| The glacier is so beautiful when viewed from the ship |
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| Fascinating rock strata |
The rest of the day was filled with last minute housekeeping, recaps and reports and packing. And you wouldn’t believe it but after all the difficult walking we’d done in great clumping gumboots over rocks etc., I caught my little toe on one of our cases and ….. you guessed it. Blast and damnation!! Not happy but what can you do - except take pain killers?
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| A wonderful shot taken by our ship photographer of a bear near the ship being bothered by birds |
Tonight was our last night and they are always rather bitter-sweet for everyone so I'm not going there! Tomorrow we disembark after what has been a magical voyage of exploration and surprises - and firsts! It started out as the Quest for Two Poles but ended up being the Success of the Three Poles. We were first to reach the Magnetic North Pole in its current position, the first 'cruise' ship to transect the Arctic Ocean through the North Pole, and the first ship to reach the Arctic Pole of Inaccessibility. A mighty voyage and a great experience.
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| Our route around the islands of Svalbard to our final destination - Longyearbyen |
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| Our record breaking transect! We sailed to three Poles. |
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