When it is light 24 hours a day, leaving the blinds open in our room is a mistake, although this time it was a lucky mistake. I kept waking up through the “night” – 3 am, 4 am, and seeing the sunlight pouring through the windows. I kept telling myself, I need to get up and take photos. But I couldn’t drag myself out of bed.
Finally at 5:50 am, I woke up again and rallied. By 6:00 am I was roaming the outside decks of the ships, taking glorious pictures of the glorious light on the glorious snow on the glorious mountains, or the glorious ice on the glorious water. If you haven’t figured out by now, it was pretty glorious. (Editor’s Note: Yes, we got your point. Blogger: Glorious!)
By 6:20, I was done, and about to head into blog. Instead, on a hunch, I drifted into the bridge. There was a buzz in the air. A bear buzz. “We’ve seen five bears” I was told. There was a mama and two cubs, and also a mama and one cub further away. There was talk by a member of the crew of a sixth bear, but no one else could confirm it, so it didn’t count.
The ship continued to drift closer to the ice pack. I searched where everyone was pointing. Boom, I saw the set of three – bears 4, 5, and 6 for me. Then, way off in the distance, there were the other two – bears 7 and 8. The first set became naked eye bears, and the other two remained distant bears.
After a bit of bear watching, I went and told Carol it was time to get up for the bears. By then, the naked eye bears were wandering closer and closer to the ship. Lucho got on the PA system (internal only, not external to the outside of the ship) to announce the pre-breakfast bears.
The three bears (well, there is no Goldilocks in this story). The three bears turned into quality bears and kept us entertained as they hung at the edge of the fast ice. (I can’t remember if I explained, but fast ice is ocean water that has frozen solid, jutting out from the shore.
They would walk around, play a bit, rest, move out of sight behind some mashed up ice boulders, and then come back into view. The bears were. . .glorious! (Sorry, but I had to.) Finally, as the cubs lay there doing nothing but dreaming of ring seals, mama got up and trudged away. Finally the cubs took the hint and left.
As they faded slowly from sight, bears seven and eight walked across the fast ice at a distance (close enough to be naked eye bears), crossing in front of us. We watched them, hoping they would turn toward us out of curiosity, but they had places to go and seals to eat.
They will go down in expedition lore as the Bjornsundet Bears – two she-bears and three cubs who were in the same neighborhood but never crossed paths. Bjornsundet is on the eastern side of Spitsbergen Island, which is by far the largest portion of Svalbard.
Speaking of eating, it was time for a glorious breakfast.
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