On Safari . . . In The North Atlantic?

Who says safaris are only for Africa? At the other end of the spectrum — and pole — on an Arctic safari, you can catch glimpses of seals, walruses, and, if you’re fortunate, polar bears.

By Barnaby Davies

No person spoke. At 80 degrees North, the 25-yr-outdated hull creaked in the ice. Camera shutters whirred although expedition staff and passengers stared spellbound. A gargantuan male polar bear stood, flat-footed, only a couple of feet beneath us on the Norwegian pack ice. Had I leaned just a little even more above the ship’s rail, we could have shaken hands. Or rather, I could have lost my video camera and the arm holding it.

It was mid-August. I was aboard the Professor Molchanov on a ten-day trek all around Spitsbergen, Norway. The ex-analysis vessel, crewed by Russians, was my new dwelling away from property. Constructed for the Hydrometeorology Institute in Murmansk, Russia, it measures a shade in excess of 233 feet extended. Ice-strengthened, she was created for Arctic northern disorders.

The remote Norwegian archipelago Svalbard, which means “Cold Coast,” is home to the world’s most northerly town, Ny Alesund. If you hanker for northern adventures, this is as very good as it gets. Here, at the 79th parallel, you are faced with superlatives at every turn: the world’s most northerly submit workplace, earth’s northernmost historical train, the world’s most northerly “tagged” fox loved ones . . . I could go on.

Svalbard’s most important island is Spitsbergen, which means “Pointed Mountains,” and presents the only global airport. On arrival my plane descended around midnight by the very low cloud cover into a fairytale setting. Jagged peaks have been draped in snow blankets, and the midnight sun pierced through, turning the fjord an apricot hue. From early April to mid-September there is no evening right here, and from April 19 to August 23, the sun will not even touch the horizon. The capital settlement of Longyearbyen, housing roughly one,800 people, is named following John Longyear, one of the Arctic Coal Company’s founders from 1906.

After a restless “night” I headed across town to my ship. I ambled previous haphazardly-parked skidoos, abandoned till the winter months. Underneath a cloudless sky, the mercury hovered at a comparatively balmy 39 degrees Fahrenheit. In town a indicator outside the post workplace politely requested that guns should really be left outside, and the pizza vendor advertised his closing time as five a.m. I could tell that this journey was going to be a very little uncommon. And there, moored and shimmering in the fjord — Adventfjorden to be unique — was the imposing hulk, the Professor Molchanov, my trip for the upcoming ten days.

Each morning, at an unsociable hour for a getaway, Troels Jacobsen, our expedition leader, brusquely awakened us in our heavily-curtained cabins. The ship’s speakers would burst into daily life at 7 a.m. each morning with the unmistakable voice of Jacobsen, authoritatively quoting our longitude, latitude, and the outdoors temperature, urging us to get straight away out on deck to witness the gorgeous vistas. We would then glide to an anchoring spot, guzzle down the stays of our coffee from the buffet breakfast downstairs, and climb down and launch out into the sea in our rubber Zodiac inflatable boats.

The to start with morning we noticed a bearded seal out on an ice chunk, a prevalent sight close to glacier fronts. Later, as I was taking images of wading Barnacle geese — the islands of the North Atlantic are their major breeding grounds — I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my lens of an arctic fox running along the hillside with a Kittiwake chick in its mouth.

Distracted by the attractiveness of the glacier Fjortendebreen, we nearly missed our very first polar bear sighting. He was walking along the shore, shut to a seaside crowded with seabirds that we’d only just completed visiting. Kittiwakes, Atlantic Puffins, and Purple Sandpipers brought our bird species count to 7 for the morning. Not a bad haul.

We then arrived in Ny Alesund, the closest town to the North Pole except for a handful of military bases. Our group madly rushed to send postcards from the post workplace, to invest in the world’s most northerly socks and hats sporting the words: “79 degrees North,” and to get that significant stamp proving we’d set foot here. (There is a rubber stamp in the submit workplace lobby in which you can wreck a passport page by yourself — and the 1 dealing with it — with too significantly ink.)

A pre-landing short in the Molchanov’s cosy bar brought dwelling the incredibly true danger bears can pose to humans. Jacobsen toted a rifle as he spoke. There have been 3 rifles in all, one for each and every expedition personnel member. “Always be within 100 feet of a gun on land, and no additional than twenty men and women to just about every gun,” he explained critically. Despite smiling though we drank tea attentively, this was no joking matter. “I genuinely, really, don’t want to shoot a bear,” stressed Jacobsen for the umpteenth time. He was adamant that he would hardly ever enable a predicament to produce the place killing a bear was an possibility.

If a bear took place to be roaming on an island that we planned to discover, we would have to alter our itinerary so as to prevent any dangerous encounters. This took place 1 day, but a very little also late — we were by now on the island. A guide spotted a lumbering splodge about a mile away on the opposite shore, steadily heading in our route. We speedily moved back to our landing site for a swift evacuation back to the ship, then recounted later on that night, more than a stiff drink, how we’d pretty much been eaten.

Bear-sensible, the highlight came on day 6, as we had been floating just beneath the 80th parallel. Jacobsen’s scheduled lecture on the “ice bear” — as the Europeans phone it — swiftly dissipated when the real thing was spotted from the bridge. I will in no way fathom how our Russian captain can see a white bear — a mile away, no significantly less — in an icy seascape of an eye-crossingly similar color. But he did, and seemingly proper on cue.

The bear emerged from a tiny ice nook and approached curiously, but not cautiously. Immediately after sniffing the hull, jumping back just briefly when a plane flew low overhead, he wandered all over to the ship’s stern. Poorly dressed passengers — some had hurried outside sporting only slippers and bathrobes — had been turning a bluish color by now, but no person wished to go within. This was extraordinary and spectacular our guides had been shaking their heads with incredulity, really clearly surprised.

We lay heaped on best of every single other, hanging above the rail, as the bear seemed to make eye speak to. He raised himself onto his hind legs, standing at least eight feet tall. Barely two yards beneath me now, I could see the striations in his claws and the person hairs in his fur. The ice compacting underneath his paws was the only sound as we collectively held our breath. I gazed into his dark eyes, pools of gleaming inquisitiveness, right up until he quietly retreated into the pristine icy wilderness.

Unbelievably, that same evening, just before midnight, the ship’s intercom crackled with a further sighting: a mother with a cub this time. We shivered under a weak sun as the duo plodded in excess of the bluish ice ridges, leaping from floe to floe. We watched, mesmerized, as the cub miscalculated the jumps, plunging its plump rump into the freezing water off the starboard side. It remained unfazed — the thick insulation of blubber usually means that polar bears can endure temperatures down to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit devoid of expanding their metabolic price.

Owning reached our most northerly stage of 80’ 32” it was all downhill now. Very well, south anyway. Although with flatulent walruses, Russian trappers’ huts, and calving glaciers nonetheless to stop by — to name just a handful of points of curiosity — the trip was far from over.

On our 2nd-to-last evening, as we cruised deep in the fjord method of Hornsund, Jacobsen radioed all 5 Zodiacs to reduce their engines. We floated, silent, merely appreciating the swishing and popping of the glacial ice surrounding us. We have been in the Higher Arctic, at the top of the planet, and I did not want to leave. This northern realm of the world’s largest carnivore had me below its spell. Then the silence was shattered as the engines revved back up, awakening me from a dream I never ever desired to neglect.