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Published: July 27th 2019
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Today is a sea day which is an opportunity to relax.... unless you are whale spotting. Then you get to stand in the cold looking for spurts (or ‘blows’) in the hope of the spurter appearing out of the water, albeit brief.
We spent sometime outdoors and Glyn saw a blue whale spurt (the Orca gang confirmed this due to spurt shape and size). We also saw two large pods of humpbacked whales - one time we were surrounded by so many spurts, it was practically an ambush! Christine was chuffed to bits to get a mother and calf photo. Today is a deep water day, so there was a lot of anticipation of some big beasts.
Time was also spent in the observation deck to get warm and still view possible whales through the large glass windows. Andy and Mo joined us and were discussing how some of the people they shared their dinner table with didn’t even look up from their card games to see the whales. But what really baffled me is paying to go on a cruise to go to Svalbard, but not being arsed to get off as the tender was ‘too much bother’
choosing to play more cards instead! It really was no bother at all getting off and even if it was, I can’t imagine not trying.
By comparison, another passenger is in a wheelchair being minus a leg. She struggles to get around in her chair, but she not only made it down the gangplank, but boarded a tender to get close to the glacier and see beluga whales.
There’s a wide variety of attitudes here; from those who enjoy the social life, entertainment and dancing - to those who say they want to see wildlife and the area but don’t actually step outside - to those who mix it up - and then those who put in the hours staring at the grey sea becoming heavily sleep deprived, but kept awake with the adrenaline rush of every sighting. I’ve heard people say on sea days that there’s nothing to see and at the same time others are super excited as we’re going over deep water which means big whales!
We also spent time scanning through our photos to select entrants for the ship photography contest. It costs £1.98 per image to enter and you get to keep
the print. The pictures are shown in the gallery area and passengers vote on 29th July. No pressure, but Andy won on his last cruise and he has an excellent puffin photo.
After Mo and Andy left to not win the quiz, loads of dolphins put on an awesome show of diving and spinning just outside our window. Things like this often happen minutes after a person leaves. So low and behold, we heard one guy tell his buddy that he’d seen loads of whales 5 minutes after his buddy had previously left.
Frequent readers of my blogs are aware that I hate getting dressed up for dinner and had planned to avoid it for the rest of the trip. However, tonight is British Night and guests are encouraged to dress accordingly - whatever your interpretation of Britishness is. Andy and Mo invited us to join them, so I put in the effort and wore a blue and white dress with red shrug. The dress turned out to be a mistake as I discovered that after days shrouded in thermals at sea, my face was a completely different colour to the rest of me. I looked like a
complete tool with tanned face and snow white neck. Glyn wore his red tartan trousers and impressed many. When we entered a bar we’d not visited before, the guitar player burst into a short rendition of the Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the UK’.
Dinner was good and we had a laugh with Andy and Mo, though slightly disappointed that the promised moaning couple on the adjacent table failed to perform. Clive was sat on a nearby table, dressed as a very stereotypical English gent, complete with straw hat and pastel shirt. We had to ask how he managed to pack the hat without crushing it!
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Dolphin in Bangladesh
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