Spitsbergen & Franz Josef Land

Arrive and transfer to hotel. Spend time today exploring this remote settlement. Be sure to visit the excellent Svalbard museum.

Embark in the afternoon and set sail through Isfjorden. With virtual 24 hour daylight at this time of year, we can already be on the lookout for marine mammals.

We sail around the coast of Spitsbergen and the Svalbard Archipelago and cross the Barents Sea, east towards Franz Josef Land. During these long days, we keep a lookout for Bowhead and other whales and even polar bears.

We clear Russian immigration at Nagurskoye and are then free to explore this wildlife and scenery rich archipelago. Our itinerary is heavily dependent on weather and ice conditions, but we expect to see polar bears, rare whales, walrus and other marine mammals as well as massive nesting colonies of seabirds including guillemots, little auks and the threatened ivory gull. With near 24 hour daylight, there are lots of opportunities for wildlife viewing.

There are also interesting geological features, such as the stone spheres on Champ Island and basalt cliffs of Rubini Rock, as well as memorials of the many polar expeditions that passed this way.

Again, we focus heavily on wildlife viewing and hope to see polar bears and other mammals and birds throughout these days. The scenery on Spitsbergen is spectacular as we sail into deep fjords and narrow channels; there are sharp mountain peaks and calving glaciers. we look out for polar bears, walrus and seals on the ice floes and reindeer and Arctic fox on the flowering tundra. In open water, there are several species of whale to be spotted and on land the remnants of human habitation in the form of long abandoned whaling, mining and trapping camps. We visit the only place apart from Longyearbyen with regular human occupation - Ny Alesund is home to an international community of Arctic researchers.

Disembark and transfer to airport or hotel