Adventure Travel Blogs

“If you are going to wish, wish big; it doesn’t cost any more.”   Ian Stirling

The Kennedy assassination, Pearl Harbour, the 1966 World Cup - these are dates remembered, but burnished onto the memory of one hundred polar disciples is the 21st June 2012, the longest day of the year, but perhaps more pertinent – it was only day two!

“The most remarkable mountains I have seen, are situated near Horn Sound…
Horn Mount, or Hedge-hog Mount, so called from an appearance of spines on the top when seen in some positions, takes its rise from a small tract of alpine land, on the southern side of Horn Sound.”  - William Scoresby, An Account of the Arctic Regions

So the drill for this expedition has been brutally broadcast, this merciless mantra etched into everyone’s mainframe. The absence of...

"A large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything." -    Laurence Sterne

A wise man once said ‘it’s not the arriving, it’s the getting there’. He was wrong, medieval check-in at the Radisson saw to that, but who cares now, the lines are thrown and the bow noses purposefully South.

Oh my! It's only day three of the Spitsbergen in Depth expedition and we've already seen sixteen bears on ice (and on kills)! Not to mention the cubs and the thumping nautical views - it's off the scale!  
 
There are 100 VERY happy Arcticians on board the Vavilov right now. Why? Because no-one does it like the Vavilov, or Exodus for that matter!

Want to be here next year? Thought so!

Related link - Special photographic to...

Tuesday, 26th June, 2011
Longyearbyen
                    
“The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending; we lay waste our powers, little we see in nature is ours” 

William Wordsworth

Permit me first to remark on today’s proceedings: I’m bored of talking about the obscene level of meteorological good fortune but Alkhornet delivered yet again. Reindeer, skuas and finally, the grim reaper of the kitti...