Hello from the Northern Hemisphere

Day 6: Within the Svalbard archipelago

Some answers to your questions:

• Sunrise and sunset both being at midnight…..this is because there is a Midnight Sun. During summer, you’ll find the Midnight Sun anywhere north of the Arctic Circle. In the Svalbard archipelago, Norway’s crown of islands in the High Arctic, the sun can be seen for 24 hours a day from late April to late August. This means that the locals enjoy just over four months of constant sunlight in the summer.
• there are around 115 aussies of the 180 passengers. There’s a few from the US, UK and one from Switzerland
• temperatures are between 3 -7 degs C

Postscript to Day 5: At 11.30 pm, an announcement interrupted our sleep…a polar bear had been sighted…”come immediately to the Bridge with cameras and binoculars” (a bit like getting the call to see the Northern Lights!)

The Midnight sun was shining on the mountains, and there, in the distance, a white dot!

Fortunately some among us had really good cameras…..

And there’s an index so that you can rate the bears, along a spectrum from skinny to very fat…..

After a late night spotting the white dot, today we travelled to Sundneset and Freemansundet in the Svalbard archipelago

We were meant to do a zodiac landing at Sundneset, but a polar bear was seen in the vicinity of the landing, so our zodiac landing turned into a safer zodiac cruise (apparently polar bears move really fast and can even swim)

Throughout the day, every time a polar bear was sighted, there would be an announcement…..the total polar bear count so far has been 5…. Enjoy the white dots! (Not quite as fascinating as the thousands of penguins but polar bears are loners)

A side benefit of looking for these white dots is that binoculars come in handy. And one of the ship’s Discovery team gave us a lesson in how to use a set of binoculars properly. Finally, I can get them to work for me!