Preparations

 And here we go again!  We booked this trip way back in November, hoping to see more wildlife than we did on the last trip.  Hoping for reindeer, arctic foxes, and polar bears. Maybe some walrus?  Who knows?

We would happily have gone with National Geographic again, but the trips we wanted were two weeks apart.  So we found Aurora Expeditions, with two cruises that connect in Longyearbyen, the largest town on Svalbard.  We won't even have to pack or leave our cabin unless we want to explore the town.

The basic shape of the trip is:

July 5--fly to Iceland. Stay a night in Reykjavík, then pick up a rental car and drive 3 hours west to Snæfellsness (SNIGH-fetls-ness) Peninsula, where we'll spend 3 days recovering from the jet lag and exploring.  Hopefully we can get in a bit of hiking on Snæfellsjökull (SNIGH-fetls-Yo-kutl), the site featured in Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth".

We drove around Snæfellsness on our 3-week tour of Iceland in 2013, but it was at the tail end of a LOT of driving and we feel we didn't give it our full attention.  You can review that trip here: https://nomadsinorden.blogspot.com/

Then it's back to Reykjavík to drop the car and meet up with the tour company.  We'll spend a night at the Hotel Grand, then there's a bus tour of the Golden Circle.  We did that on the 2013 trip, but the sights are certainly worth a second visit.  Sometime in the afternoon, we'll board the Greg Mortimer and set sail.

The Greg Mortimer is the exact same type of ship as last year's NG Resolution, built by the same shipyard.  The interior layout and decor will be different, but otherwise it should be pretty similar.

We don't spend any more time on Iceland, but head directly across the Denmark Strait to East Greenland. We'll spend a few days cruising northward, putting into various fjords along the way, depending on how thick the ice is.  Lars is quite eager to get a look at Northeast Greenland National Park...the northernmost (and 2nd largest) National Park in the world.  Highlights should be a visit to Ittoqqortoormiit (one of the world's remotest Inuit settlements) and Scoresby sund, the world's largest fjord. 

Then two days crossing the Greenland Sea, where we should be able to see Humpback, Minke, and Fin whales, and possibly Bowheads, Belugas, and Narwhals as well.  Sheila would especially like to se a Narwhal!

And finally: Svalbard!  We are both very excited to visit this distant Norwegian territory, one of the northernmost settled areas on the planet and home to the Doomsday Vault, where they are collecting seeds of all of the plant life on Earth.

Here's what Aurora has to say:

Svalbard offers arctic wilderness at its best. The members of our experienced Expedition Team, who have made countless journeys to this area, will use their expertise to tailor our itinerary, choosing the best options based on the prevailing weather, sea-ice conditions, and opportunities for wildlife encounters.

Phenomenal fjords, magnificent mountain ranges, and a polar desert rich in fossils set the stage for heroic tales of early exploration.  See walrus hauled-out on sea ice or on beaches.  on land, we stretch our legs on walks across tundra carpeted in brightly coloured wildflowers.  We visit towering cliffs noisy with nesting guillemots and puffins, and scree slopes that hold Svalbard's largest little auk colonies.

So...we don't know exactly where we'll go for those three days, but the trip ends in Longyearbyen, described as a "tiny Norwegian metropolis with 2,400 residents from almost 53 different countries." It's pretty famous for being a place where you need to know how to shoot a rifle if you plan to leave the city limits, and you never go out there without being armed.....because polar bears.

July 24th is changeover day, when we switch from the "Jewels of the Arctic" cruise to "Svalbard in Depth", which will take us all around the archipelago.  Again, no specific itinerary is possible, as so much depends on how the ice is laying in the channels between islands.

We're REALLY hoping to see polar bears and walrus on this part of the trip!

We'll end by flying from Longyearbyen to Oslos, spend a couple of nights there so we can visit the Fram museum, and then head home by way of Keflavík.  Sheila really wants to visit the Fram, which we missed on a previous museum tour of Oslo. It was designed by polar explorer Fritjof Nansen to be purposely caught in the Arctic pack-ice and carried close to the North Pole by currents. The hull design enabled it to be lifted up onto the ice rather than being crushed by it, and proved so successful that Roald Amundsen used the Fram on his expedition to the Antarctic.  Sheila has become kind of obsessed with Nansen and has been plowing through an 800-page biography.  There will likely be more about him later.

That's all for now.  Time to get to packing!  Temps should range from mid-30s to mid-40s Fahrenheit (1-7 Celsius), but there will be added chill from the water, ice, and snow. But warmer on the ship and when hiking.  A bit challenging to pack for.