01.07.2011 – 01.07.2011  1 °C

Weather was still fairly ordinary when we woke up this morning. Windy, raining and overcast. Temp itself was quite warm though (probably about 5) so not too bad a morning to be out in zodiacs. The morning zodiac cruise was to see a big glacier and to see a bird sanctuary.

The zodiac cruise itself was really peaceful, no splash and just 8 people and the wilderness! The trip started really well with us seeing a lone puffin swimming along (gosh they are cute birds). We eventually wound our way through the ice bergs to make it to the glacier (14th July). It still impresses me to see such a huge chunk of ice up so close. We were fortunate that there wasn’t any fast ice in front of the glacier so we were able to get really close in the zodiac. No carving ice this time though (and probably was a good thing because we were pretty close!)

On the return trip to the boat we passed by this huge granite cliff that is home to thousands of birds. The main highlight of the cliff is the home of the puffins.. They normally nest in burrows but here on Spitsbergen they nest inside this cliff (no foxes on the cliff!). We were really fortunate as we would have seen at least 30 puffins doing their thing on the cliffs! Puffins are the cutest birds.. they look quite a lot like penguins but with a very vivid red and orange beak (not that dissimilar to a macaw), they are small, fat and they waddle when the walk around! Just adorable!

After lunch we stopped off at Ny-Alesund. Ny-Alesund is the other town here on Spitsbergen and is famous at is one of the key settlements used for all of the polar exploration. It is also the northern most town in Norway (and probably most of the world) at 79 degrees north. Amundsen (the famous Norwegian polar explorer) flew his zeppelin from this town to try and discover the “great north pole landmass”. He was successful at crossing the pole but obviously not successful at discovering the missing land mass! The town itself is really small (fishing village sized) but is the main town for polar research and so some of the countries of the world have research bases here for arctic research. We weren’t able to spend time talking to the researches (and apparently they aren’t interested in spending time with us) so we wandered around the town and saw the relics left over from polar expeditions.

Finished off the day blogging and having a well-deserved early night (long nights and long days is making for a very weary traveller!)