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…)
