Tuesday 12 August 2014

Just liquid sunshine...


What weather out there! High waves and windspeed up to 12m/s made it impossible to land at Andreetangen. The nature of expedition struck us in all it’s power. So what to do? The expedition team was not tired to put up some lectures for us and distract us a bit from the greyish weather outside. So the german speakers learned how Svalbard’s glaciers are on the move and the English listened to Thomas’ highly interesting facts about the king of the Arctic: the polar bear! And after lunch we went for real expedition, we made a landing at Russebukta, a new place on EdgeΓΈya MV Fram hasn’t been before! The weather was still somehow “rough” and it was raining – but that was just liquid sunshine.. J 
The place itself was lovely, soft ground basaltic rocks, lots of polar willow, knotweed and saxifrages. Some of us spotted reindeers and red throated divers, barnacle geese, eider ducks, kittiwakes, snow bunting, northern fulmars, arctic terns and purple sandpipers, all the feathered friends were there. Some of us spotted a ring seal lying on the beach. Unfortunately it had an infection on its eyes and seemed not to be very well anymore, so we kept our distance, not to stress it even more. 
The way back to MV Fram turned out to be “quite” wet – we all got soaked with sea spray, it was hilarious! How nice to get back to the warmth of a cozy boat, awaiting us with pancakes and hot coffee! (And a hot shower…)