The next day we sailed to an area near a glacier for the Polar Plunge. We opted out after watxjing a couple people do it. They were shivering so much!
In the afternoon, the team organized another landing to a ranger shack. We stayed on the ship.
Yesterday, we were at Bjørnøya, which is translated into English as Bear Island.
Surprisingly, it was not named for its abundance of bears. In fact it would be rare to see a polar bear on this island. Two Dutch explorers in 1596 actually named it Vogel Eylandt (Bird Island in English). Over the years it apparently was changed because they happened to see a bear swimming by the island. But bird island is much more appropriate. The island is inhabited by a variety of bird species including the Glaucous Gull, Northern Fulmar, Arctic Tern and Thick billed Murre. The ship offered a zodiac cruise to an area around the island. The weather conditions, especially the wind, were threatening so we decided to stay onboard and watch remotely via the ship's GSS zoom camera.
Today is our first actual sea day. The expedition team has no landings or zodiac cruises planned. There will be several lectures about Svalbard and some of the things we've been seeing. Plus trivia and games like any other cruise ship.
We have two more nights onboard until we disembark in Tromso on Sunday. We'll have one night there and then we'll fly to Helsinki and stay four nights. That will be a new country for both of us.
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