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Kvitoya walruses

The ship travelled south east during the night to the small island of Kvitoya, the easternmost one in the Svalbard archipelago. Although I'd seen sunshine when I got up in the night, by the time we got up properly at 7.00 it was very foggy.

We thought the planned zodiac ride around Kraemerpynten, the most easterly point, named for a Norwegian trapper, would be cancelled due to the poor visibility and rather strong wind, but Ryan determined it was safe to go out if the boats stayed together in a convoy.

Our driver was Jiayi and she took good care of us. Getting into the boat was a little harder than usual as it bobbed around against the ship, but once in it was a fun ride. At first it remained foggy though I was convinced I could see the sun starting to break through. Our first wildlife sighting was some guillemots and soon after that, Arctic terns started flying over and around us.

And yes, quite soon the sun did appear, gleaming on the ice cap that covers most of Kvitoya. Jiayi spotted a small group of walruses on the beach and slowed the boat so we could take photos, though that was hard in the conditions as our boat was continually moving up and down.

But further along we came to a small islet covered with walruses! Jiayi estimated around 35 at first, and later thought it might be nearer 50. Again it was hard to get photos, but I took lots to increase my chances of some decent sharp ones, which paid off.

We went a little further along the coast then turned back towards the ship. We were now travelling into the wind and there was a lot of rather icy spray, which Chris and I took the brunt of as we were sitting at the front. Jiayi had warned us so I'd tucked my camera away, but I was only wearing my thin glove liners, to make photography easier, and my hands quickly got both wet and cold! Still I rather enjoyed the ride, despite the regular soakings!

Back on board we peeled off our wet layers and went for a hot drink in the library at the forward end of deck six. Soon it was lunchtime, and as we finished our meal more walruses were spotted sitting on passing icebergs though we were moving too fast to photograph them.

Unfortunately by the time we got around to the other side of the island where a second zodiac cruise was planned, the fog had closed in further and the wind got too strong for those small boats. So instead, Ryan and our captain agreed it would be better to continue in the direction of tomorrow's hoped-for sites to be able to go more slowly in these conditions and arrive in good time.

We therefore had another quiet afternoon. There were two presentations arranged: the first, Mike’s talk about polar ice, we didn't go to (I heard later he had mostly repeated information from previous talks). But the second, Ian with more tales of attempts to reach the North Pole, we did go to and although there was some repetition found plenty of interest too.

There was also the usual pre-dinner briefing where Ema told us more about the walruses and I discovered there had been babies in the haul-out we had seen - obvious when I looked more closely at my photos.

We sat with some different people at dinner, a couple from Wimbledon and another couple from Edinburgh. We then went to an amusing talk from Brian about his experiences on the hippy overland trail to India and Kathmandu in the late 1970s. A fun way to round off the day!

This featured blog entry was written by ToonSarah from the blog Travel with me ....
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