On our last morning in the Svalbard fjords, we spent a lot of time looking at some massive glaciers. On this morning we were also getting some sunlight occasionally through the clouds lighting up the mountains. I took the following panorama from the deck of the ship with a long lens. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but the three main mountain peaks make a great pano, I think. I have heard it said that having three main things in a photo is sort of a magic number for a nice composition; maybe there is something to that.

If you look in the lower left of the pano above, you can just make out a cave in the bottom of the glacier. This cave became the source of quite a bit of fascination on this morning and the inspiration for one of my favorite photos of the trip, shown below. Just seemed like such a surreal thing to see a nicely rounded tunnel going into the glacier like someone put it there.

We eventually cruised over to near the cave in the zodiacs. We didn’t get very close as it looked as though it could collapse at any minute. The birds were not worried though as we saw dozens of them flying about inside the cave. We periodically saw pieces of ice falling from the roof, but didn’t get to see a grand collapse. It probably fell in just after the ship when around the bend.

As for what lurked inside that cave, I can’t say. One can only assume that it is the home of some terrible ice monster. But it didn’t seem intent on attacking little boats full of photographers so on we went.

In the photo below I tried to do something artsy with the jagged glaciers against the jagged mountains in the distance. I remember also trying this at the glacier I went to in Argentina. Not sure either effort met my ambitions. Though, floating around in a little boat does limit your perspectives quite a bit.

After this, we went and saw some puffins in the afternoon, but you already read about that in my previous post. I didn’t want to have too many ice focused posts in a row so I tried to separate them with animals. I think we did save the most beautiful fjord for last though and I miss waking up in the mornings and going out on deck and seeing the fantastic views.

The next morning we found ourselves coming into port in Longyearbyen again. We sorted out all of our belongings and waited in the lounge for our busses to arrive to take us to the airport or hotel. This was one of the most difficult parts of the trip for me as it meant saying goodbye. I really enjoyed the group of people I was with and I hope to see some of them again someday, maybe on future adventures. I did get to have dinner once again with some of my companions at a hotel in Oslo that evening, but this was the last time we were all together.

The name of the touring company that I used is Aurora Expeditions. It’s a top notch outfit and they do a lot of expeditions in the North and South seas. If you are interested in such a journey, these guys have my recommendation. Thanks for reading about my fun adventure.