Svalbard is far north from the main body of Norway and is well inside the Arctic circle. The trip we were on was called “Around Spitzbergen”. Spitzbergen is the largest island in Svalbard, and the original goal was to circumnavigate Spitzbergen. Unfortunately, ice was blocking the Hinlopen Strait and most of the east side of the island. So we spent our time in the northwest.
Day One -- Ny Ålesund, Krossfjorden
Day Two -- Fuglesangen, Smeerenburg, Moffen
Day Three -- Alkefjellet, Hinlopen Strait
Day Four -- Chermsideøya and North
Day Five -- Sjuøyane and
Phippsøya
Day Six -- Purchasneset on Lågøya
Day Seven -- Worsleyneset in Woodfjorden
Day Eight -- Ny London on Blomstrandhalvøya
Day Nine -- Coraholmen and Gipsvika
Here are Winnie's pictures of our two main bear encounters.
This map outlines our travels.
We were traveling aboard the M/V Grigoriy Mikheev, operated by Oceanwide Expeditions. We booked our trip through Galapagos Travel partly because the owner of Galapagos Travel was on the trip as a naturalist. (In 2001 we went to the Galapagos Islands with Galapagos Travel). It took us approximately 30 hours to get from our home in Los Gatos, California to the guest house where we spent our first night on Spitzbergen. This includes 15 hours sitting on airplanes.
All the pictures pictures were taken with a Canon G2. All images captured at full resolution, 2272 x 1704 pixels, with minimal JPEG compression. The average size of the original images is approximately 2 magabytes. Most pictures were taken in full auto mode or program mode auto exposure. The lens on the G2 is a 3x zoom ranging from a mild wide angle 34mm (35mm equivalent) to a rather short telephoto at 105mm. It is much more appropriate for landscapes than close-up bird photography.
We carried a MindStor with us to store our images. We came back with approximately 1300 digital pictures (including the nine days we spent in Norway after this trip).