Photographic Voyages - Spitzbergen June & July 2010

On 24th June 2010 Paul Goldstein will be leading a special Photographic Polar Bear charter in Spitzbergen. This will be a high octane full-on adventure concentrating on wildlife. It plans to maximise every one of the 24 hours of daylight and will have no qualms about spending long hours in the sea ice. He will be repeating this on 24th July 2010.

Spitzbergen Explorer on the Vavilov (PNS)
11 days
24th June 2010 £3299 ship only
24th July 2010 £3590 ship only

Below is an abridged excerpt from the ship's log Paul wrote on our Spitzbergen Photographic Voyage in July...                     

Kong Karls Land, Spitzbergen

The 24th July produced a pulsating polar epic. This was a day that will have exhausted 20,000 images, yet the impressions burnished into all evangelical passengers' memory mainframes are of a more lasting and significant variety. Was it really today that opened with a gnarly old walrus in repose on pancake ice, yes it was, and ice was the theme of the day. The patterns lay immaculately on the tranquil surface: perfect pentagons, oscillating octahedrons and heavenly hexagons, but no bears except a distant blemish on a granite scree slope. After scything through this imperial mosaic, impeccably grouted to the petroleum surface the bear whisperer, Captain Oleg to you and me, languidly pointed out a female meandering across her back yard. This one was for turning and soon, as the sinister curtain of anvil mist descended she left us, as did our visibility. A difficult but ultimately defining call was made to leave the ice field of a thousand bear tracks and head East.

After a morning like this most were delirious yet it proved but an icy hors d'oevre to dinner's lavish final course as a mother and her perky offspring seduced camera palettes into meltdown for over an hour late in the evening sunlight. Inquisitive and endearing these two provided thrills normally reserved only for the very few. They weaved in and out of turquoise Gaudiesque structures, culminating in a sensational siesta under the hull. They also, critically provided airborne action, and you know how I feel about that. If this is bettered this season by any ship I will be surprised, but this is no normal ship and Captain Oleg no normal Captain.

The last two days are not usual, but they are worked for, proper work: no line-managing, pitiful nauseating PowerPoint presentations, just good honest graft. It paid off. In spades. A passenger, a veteran of many Exodus holidays, remarked after the late show that 'today was the finest day of her life'.

Check out the online Polar videos and reserve your place for one of the upcoming slide presentations that Paul does throughout the year.

FREE Flights offer to Ushuaia - Book your voyage to Antarctica by 15th September and receive free return economy flights, worth around GBP1000 per person, from London to Ushuaia.