DINING WITH POLAR BEARS
Our Sales Manager, John Faithfull, has recently returned from a once in a lifetime trip to the Arctic. Read all about his adventures here.
In December last year, I was lucky enough to visit Antarctica. This was a hugely exciting adventure of epic proportions. Vast and mesmerising landscapes, stunning wildlife and fascinating historical interest all served up in one of the world’s most inhospitable regions. “How do you top that?”, I mused on the long flight home. The obvious answer sprang to mind and last month I was on my way to the other pole, suspecting that it could not live up to the attractions of Antarctica. I was wrong. The Arctic Circle offered the travel opportunity of a lifetime, including stunning wildlife that rivals any experience in my 25 years of travelling.
My Arctic experience involved a ten night cruise which circumnavigated the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard Archipelago just 600 miles from the North Pole. Whereas our Winter is the time to visit Antarctica, the fjords, glaciers, islands and straits of northern Svalbard are only accessible in our Summer. My late August trip was the last of the season. I witnessed the sea beginning to ice over and pack-ice form.
Night swiftly gives way to day as you fly up from Oslo and enter the land of the midnight sun. It’s a confusingly bright 2.40am arrival into Longyearbyen, capital of Svalbard (pop. 1500). This modern town struggles up a valley towards a glacier and is scattered with the debris of its coal-mining past. This is a suitably cold and desolate spot from which to join your ship, although you may want to spend a day or two checking out the museum and coal mines or perhaps arranging a husky dog-sledding trip (sled replaced by a cart on wheels).
I joined a very comfortable ship called the Antarctic Dream which, along with most other Arctic tourist vessels, makes the long journey between the poles twice a year, following the polar seasons. Many of the vessels also offer this journey to clients, taking in such remote islands as Tristan de Cunha and Ascension. The ships are either ice-breakers or have strengthened hulls to allow them to navigate through thick pack-ice which increases your chance of that illusive Polar Bear encounter. Other ships such as the Russian Expedition/Research vessels offer cabins that are fairly functional but all ships generally include food, services of tour guides and lectures en-route. A great plus point of the “Dream” was the communal dining area with large picture windows where we ate tasty & imaginative three-course dinners while surveying the horizon for whale “blows”. Service would often be interrupted by a sighting and the long-suffering kitchen staff were constantly delaying service and working around our activities as we extended the length of zodiac trips to make the most of a wildlife viewing opportunity.
The veteran guides on the Dream have completed a huge number of Arctic hours between them. It was their ability to spot and describe the flora and fauna of the Arctic with such knowledge, enthusiasm and animation that really elevated the quality of this trip to a very high level. The general structure of each day included sailing between landing points (often overnight) and then two to three landings a day by rubber zodiacs. The point and highlights of each landing varied and included visits to whaling beaches, mining towns, trappers huts, glaciers, tundra and mountain hikes with walks of varying duration and degrees of challenge to suit all members of the party.
Of course, wildlife was the chief reason to visit the Arctic for 95% of those on board and whether we had a sighting or encounter from the ship, zodiac or on land, everything else was put on hold to make the most of these moments. Polar bears are top of the food chain and top of most people’s wish lists of wildlife to see. We were not disappointed and ended up having half a dozen meetings with these hugely powerful Arctic wanderers. The guides would recce each landing prior to our arrival to ensure that we did not have a white wooly welcoming committee. In fact a couple of landings were missed and one aborted mid-trek as a bear was spotted by the guides who scoured the terrain and provided a half km cordon around the party. We spent a number of hours viewing bears from the zodiacs but the absolute best encounters were from the ship itself which offered a dozen grand-stand look-out points from where camera shutters constantly snapped and dozens of binocular lenses were pressed to watery eyes as we twice encountered bears on the pack ice. Following each spotting, the ship shut down the engines and it was the bear’s curiosity that drew it to us. The first time a blood-spattered ice flow drifted past, at the centre of which was the skeleton of a seal, literally stripped to the bone. A very lethargic, post-dinner Polar bear spent a couple of hours dozing and pacing the ice just 50 metres away from the boat before slipping into the water, swimming around the prow and the disappearing into the non-sunset.
Another time, following a distant sighting, we spent an excited evening watching a bear circle the ship a km away before approaching us. Polar bears can smell a seal perhaps a metre or so beneath ice and could certainly smell dinner being prepared aboard the Dream. It nonchalantly padded up to us, licked the side of the ship just 5 metres beneath me and then gradually sauntered off. This time into a dreamy pink and yellow sunset – we had just passed 23rd August when the sun briefly dips below the horizon for the first time, signalling the beginning of shorter days, colder weather and then the brutally inhospitable Arctic Winter.
Our journey around Svalbard was accompanied by some fantastic sunny days that really showcased the stunning mountain scenery and brought out a spectrum and depth of blues in the glaciers and icebergs that were unreal. We were introduced to a fascinating range of small and hardy Arctic plant-life and the wildlife continued to show-off itself for our benefit. We spotted Arctic Foxes, Reindeer, seals and walruses. Whales sighted included Minke, Humpback, Finwhale and the exceedingly rare Bowhead whale, that accompanied us for two hours as we navigated our way through a fjord. We visited monolithic cliffs which were the home to huge colonies of guillemots, we visited puffin colonies and enjoyed the company of Eider Ducks, various geese, of Glaucous Gulls, skuas and terns. We even spotted the very rare Ross’s Gull, to the huge excitement of bird-watchers on board who had already been treated to a fantastic range of bird-life.
OK – some may think you odd to consider holidaying in a cold climate during our short (and often damp) Summer. However, the experience offered by an Arctic cruise is unique! Anybody with a passing interest in wildlife is sure to be completely enchanted by a trip around Svalbard which is accompanied by a dramatic backdrop of epic glacial scenery. I have not even touched on the mind-boggling tales of human endurance relating to adventurers such as Amundsen and the hardy coal-miners, research teams and whalers who lived and died in this harsh environment.
Prices for a ten night Spitzbergen Explorer cruise start from £3995 per person based on two people sharing and include flights, cruise and transfers. Why not finish with a few days of culture in Norway’s capital, Oslo, to reacquaint yourself with civilisation? Additional accommodation in Oslo and Longyearbyen on request.
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