In search of Polar Bears

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The sole purpose of this trip is to see Polar Bears. The trip over to Norway was reasonably uneventful, but the meal on the SAS flight was easily the worst we have ever had. We were taken to an airport hotel at which nothing was happening so we hopped on a train into Oslo and after much walking found a nice restaurant and then came back to the hotel to meet fellow travellers in the bar. The following morning we caught the flight up to Tromso where the first mishap occurred in that two of our three cases did not arrive. After the usual procedures we checked onto the Silver Cloud and then headed into town to buy some essentials at formidable expense in case the luggage didn’t turn up. It arrived 20 minutes before we were due to sail!

Our first evening on board consisted of the usual evacuation procedure and later the Zodiac procedure followed by a lovely dinner and more chatting with other guests in the bar. There are only 178 guests and over 200 crew.

Day1- Zodiac trip out to Gjesvaerstappen island, which has a huge bird colony of puffins, cormorants and razorbills and the odd eagle. We did see one large seal briefly. Sadly my crappy eyesight means all birds look roughly alike. In the afternoon we arrived at Skarstag island on which is the North Cape which is the most northerly point of Europe as it is attached to the mainland by a tunnel. There is a big globe there and a museum with some odd things such as a small chapel hewn out of the rocks, a small room dedicated to a visit by the King of Siam and an even odder room of “light”. Outside the fog came down and ruined what views there would have been. We managed to wangle a seat back on an earlier bus, stopping briefly to have a word with a Sami native and one of his reindeer and to see a week-old baby reindeer. The Sami measure their wealth in the number of reindeer they have and are reluctant to say how many they have, usually a few thousand. Day2 – Anchored off Bear Island which sounds great but there haven’t been any bears here for over 20 odd years. We decided not to go on the Zodiac tour which was going to spend 90 minutes bobbing around more bird cliffs. So we went to Team Trivia and won so day not wasted.

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