26.09.2015
We watched the little
visited Hornsund, which actually is a fjord for breakfast and were again
extremely lucky with the weather. We even saw Horntind a spectacularly
beautiful mountain, which at 1431m is the highest in the area, but usually is
invisible being covered in clouds all the time, but not today!
The landing site in
Austre Burgerbukta is allows a lot of roaming around on a big former middle
moraine between two glaciers, which have retreated and form a frame around the
landing site. We found polar bear tracks and quite a few carcasses of arctic
fox, reindeer and seal, but still no real live bears.
The Polar cirkle boat
cruisers went out looking for bears in surrounding areas that are known for
polar bears, but instead we found beutiful iceformations and icebergs starting
to freeze together with newly forming sea ice in Vestre Burgerbukta. And the
watersurface was smooth as a mirror. Quite a few species of birds are still
enjoying the beautiful autumn here, before moving south: Fulmar, Glaucous gull,
Kittiwake, Black Guillemot were still around.
Continuing the search for a polar bear we went a bit further into Hornsund,
when we stopped looking for bears because we found a big group of beautiful
white wales, also called Belugas. On the way back to the Fram we even got to
watch two big male Svalbard reindeer, so we had a perfect wildlife watching
day.
After the landing Fram
took us exploring deeper into the Hornsund all the way to Brepollen, one of the
fasest retreating glaciers in the last cenetury, but even now after it was
split up into multiple glacierfronts it is still an impressive sight.
After that we sailed
back out of the Hornsund and then set course south towards Bjørnøya.
