Reindeer - Day 12

Breakfast with Mark and Karen from Melbourne. They are a lovely couple. He told us about his volunteering in one of the Marshall Islands.

Next up we got Zodiacs to St Johnsfjorden where we were allowed to walk without leaders, once the area had been scoped for bears and little flags laid out to denote possible walks. It was raining and cold. New snow had fallen on the higher mountains. We took the higher path to view the glacier then walked round the beach area which had lots of blocks of ice washed up.

We had lunch with Lisa and John (Chicago) then around 3 onto the zodiacs for an area not far from the morning (gjertsenodden)as reindeer had been spotted. It was quite a boggy mossy area. We saw 2 in the distance then we walked up some higher ground as Ben had spotted some ptarmigan which disappeared. We sat about looking at the views which were stunning as the sun had come out. Then Ben thought we could go back and see the reindeer from higher ground. From there we walked down quite close to them. Svalbard/Spitzbergen reindeer are a species. Not very big. Brown in summer and white in winter. Ours were a bit of both. They were casting the velvet from their antlers so the antlers looked red.

Dinner was with the Mormon couple from north Utah - she is the mayor of Smithstown. He was a teacher in Germany, UK and Japan. A kayaker from Montana was at the table. He showed pix of a seal at the kayak and a reindeer on the shore. Also at the table were an Italian couple from near Venice.

After dinner was boogie bingo which we didn’t participate in. The excuse was MrC’s cold.