Day Six

When we woke up on Monday morning, all we could see outside our rooms was one huge cliff with thousands of birds. And when we learned that we would be cruising in our zodiac through that, we could not be more excited.

We hopped onto the zodiacs and cruised through the clear, cut blue waters straight to the huge cliff. As we raised our necks to see the vast expanse of birds, you could not help but notice the constant frantic activity not only by the hundreds of thousands of birds perched on the cliff but also by the ones flying through the clear blue sky overhead.

Our zodiac driver took us as close as we could to the rocks and even drove in and around them so we would be able to see exactly what it is like to be an Arctic animal.

And all of a sudden we saw a little dark brown splotch moving around – it was an Arctic fox. But before you knew it, it had run across the hill, behind rocks, and out of our sight. And that was the Arctic was all about – being quick on your feet and always attentive because before you know it something rare as ever could be gone.

After 90 minutes of cruising around in the beautiful Alkjefellet, we were back to the ship for a riveting lecture on polar bears by Brent Houston, a naturalist from Montana.

He told us everything we could possibly know about polar bears. Right from how to distinguish between male and female polar bears to different adventures he has personally had with polar bears.

And almost as if he could tell the future, a polar bear was sighted later that day. But this time it wasn’t just a yellowish white rice, it was right in front of us floating on pack ice.

We spent hours and hours on deck watching the polar bear up close and took lots and lots of pictures. Lucky for us, we had the most cooperating polar bear ever imagined. He put up with us as our captain tried to inch closer and closer and posed for us for hours on end.

Our day filled with polar bears wasn’t done quite yet. We had a polar bear movie that night and then we were off to sleep.