Eight years ago, when Trevor and I arrived at the San Diego airport after surviving a sinking cruise ship in Antarctica, we were swarmed by reporters. One of them asked, "Will you ever go on a cruise again?" I smiled and responded, "Of course! I want to go on a cruise to the arctic."
This dream just became a reality thanks to a graduation gift from my dad (he had no idea what he was in for when he offered to take me anywhere in the world). :)
On July 15, my dad and I set off on a 3 week adventure to the arctic that started in Norway, took us close to the North Pole, and ended in Iceland. Our first stop was Oslo. We spent time walking around the city, exploring the grounds of the Royal Palace, and people-watching at the wharf.
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| Royal Palace |
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| Royal Palace Gardens |
We took a boat to the island with museums and went inside the Viking Ship, Kon Tiki, and MS Fram museums. It was incredible learning about the history of exploration and seeing the boats that carried Vikings and explorers across the seas.
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| Viking Ship Museum |
Next, we hopped on a plane to Haugesund, Norway. We met up with two of my dad's friends from his
trip to Madagascar - Linzi and Jon. They are two incredible people who love to travel and explore the world. We spent the night at their home and watched Jon's GoPro videos of diving with sharks (I was inspired!). The next morning, we drove to Stavanger and walked around town. We had to take a ferry and go through many underground tunnels on the way there.
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| Jon, my dad, and Linzi in Stavanger |
After lunch in town, we drove on a very windy road that seemed to have 1000+ switchbacks to Lysebotn, which is a small town at the base of a fjord. The clouds were very low and it was pouring rain, so the visibility wasn't great, but what we could see of the fjord was amazing. We spent the night in a visitor hut (similar to a hostel).
The next morning, we started the hike to Kjerag. We headed straight up into the clouds. Scaling slippery polished granite rocks with only a chain to keep us from plummeting a thousand feet down into the fjord.
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The "hike" (aka rock climbing)
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Jon and Linzi kept telling me to visualize how beautiful the fjord was since we couldn't see through the clouds. I made it about half way - rock climbing, falling down, and trudging through snow before turning back due to illness. I waited in the lodge on a cliff overlooking the fjord until the rest of the crew returned. Then, we headed back to Stavanger and spent two days exploring this cute harbor town.
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| Stavanger, Norway |
We hopped on a plane to Longyearbyen, a small village at 78 degrees north, on the island of Svalbard. We spent a night at a hotel, visited the town's museum, and then boarded the MV Fram for a 7 day cruise around Svalbard.
We set sail that evening in search of the elusive polar bear. The boat was amazing - 8 decks, a panorama room with windows all around, two lecture rooms, a large restaurant, a fitness room with a ping pong table, and two jacuzzis (which we made use of often!).
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| Panorama room on the 7th floor |
We stopped at Barentsburg, a Russian coal mining town, in the evening and then stopped again at Ny Alesund, the farthest north scientific research station, in the morning.
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| Barentsburg housing complex |
While walking around Ny Alesund, my dad found a way to get attacked by arctic terns, so I took photos of the terns dive-bombing his head. There were many terns near the harbor so I spent time trying to photograph them as they hovered above the water ready to dive down for food.
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| Arctic Tern |
Next, we docked at Magdelenafjord, which had a stunning glacier. My dad went on a hike, while I did the polar bear plunge and went for a swim in arctic water. It was freezing!!
At 5:30 a.m. the captain announced on the boat intercom that a polar bear was spotted. I grabbed warm clothes and sprinted to the front of the boat. I was the first one out there. The polar bear was sleeping very far away. It was practically a small dot on my camera. Another polar bear was spotted even further away. Hoping that these weren't the only polar bears we'd see, we headed back to sleep.
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| Our first polar bear sighting (the white spot in the middle) |
Later that morning we went to see the Monaco glacier, which was stunning. We took zodiac boats up close to the glacier and our group got to see it calve. We went along the wall of the glacier and zipped around icebergs before heading back to the cruise ship.
We spent the evening in the panorama room as we sailed to our next location. I spotted a few whales, but wasn't fast enough with my camera to capture them. One of the passengers said that the whale with the huge spout might be a blue whale - cool!
At 11pm we reached Moffen a small island at 80 degrees north. The island had two pods of walruses on it. With the midnight sun (24 hours of sunlight) it was bright enough to see the walruses even though they were far away...
Stay tuned for part 2 - more polar bears, walruses, the ice edge, and Iceland!
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