Svalbard in the Arctic - June 23 - 24, 2013

Longyearbyen

After an early morning breakfast, we departed Oslo on our SAS charter flight to arrive in Longyearbyen 3 hours later. Upon landing, there was a surprisingly large amount of exposed land. The town is tucked into the hillside and feels prepared for the darkness and harsh elements that it experiences for so much of the year. Our tour guide was from Australia and loves the dark. Hard to fathom. We boarded the National Geographic Explorer from the outskirts of town and settled in. I was in the same cabin as I was on my trip to Antarctica so it feels like home again. We set sail during dinner only to be told that we had to go back to port after dinner to pick up our fresh produce which was left in Oslo and coming in on a later flight!

On Monday, we sailed down to Hornsund in southwest Spitsbergen, the largest island in Svalbard. In the afternoon, we saw our first polar bear – far off in the distance, sleeping on the ice on the shore.