Saturday 30 July 2011 – Heading: north
We were very lucky this morning to see our first polar bear walking alongthe shore of Amsterdamoya. We jumped into our zodiacs and carefully went after the polar bear whom went swimming but got ashore of Danskeoya. The polar bear wasn’t paying much attention to us, he was more interested in the harbour seals who were laying on the beach. We watched the polar bear very carefully go after the seals, but the seals just laughed at him, They jumped into the water en circled around him, splashing their tails like they were making a long nose and saying, ha ha you can’t get us.
After this exciting sighting, we visit the historical sites of Smeerenburg en Virgohamna where two attempts to reach the North Pole by air were started. On Smeerenburg we walked along the blubber ovens of the 17th century village. After lunch we sailed to Fuglefjorden where we started our zodiac cruise along the glacierfront of Svitjodbreen wich had a huge calving. The zodiac cruise continued to Holmiabukta where we hoped to find polar bears scavenging on the fin whale carcass but there were only bones left, still impressive though.
