Getting to the ice cave is half the fun; taking control of a dog sled to venture into the great white wilderness part of the adventure. Kicking things off in the dog yard, you are introduced to 300 eager huskies waiting for their next tour. While you’re equipped with an exposure suit, your guide will harness and prepare the dogs for an epic adventure across frozen river beds, glaciers and on to an ice cave at the Scott Turner Glacier.
Cave access is via a small opening where you unceremoniously reverse through an inconspicuous entry before the caverns of silky-smooth ice layers become illuminated only by your headlamp. With the headlamp off, the immersion in darkness is so absolute it feels heavy.
Hand-holding your camera to snap off a shot just won’t do justice to this magical fissure in an ice mass that is hundreds of meters deep and more than a thousand years old. Using the widest possible lens and a sturdy tripod, frame a shot that shows the scale, diversity and magnitude of the cavern. Set your focus to a point at the back of the cave and shoot on full manual settings. Set your aperture to f/7.1 to f/11 and use a cable release or shutter timer to ensure a shake-free result. The most important element os a shutter speed of 10 to 20 seconds. Be ready for the shot and, as soon as the camera commences the exposure, use your headlamp to ‘paint’ the walls of the cavern with light as quickly and evenly as possible. Don’t stop until the exposure is complete. That’s it!
For extra points, have a fellow explorer positioned in the photo as far from the camera as possible to provide a sense of scale and to provide contrast with a familiar, living element in this otherworldly scene.
Staying in tents on Norway’s spectacular Lofoten Islands doesn’t necessarily mean roughing it. Wake up to the archipelago’s famous fjords right at your tent’s doorstep, in one of these traditional Sami tents designed by Off the Map Travel. The two-night, three-day glamping experience will introduce you to the local wildlife, while you immerse yourself in this picturesque landscape of fjords, mountains and lush green valleys.
Your days will be filled with cruises, visits to local farms, hikes and kayaking experiences, while you play I-Spy with the white-tailed sea eagles, porpoises and whales under the midnight sun. This pre-packaged experience also includes a wilderness catch-and-cook cooking class.
Hotels are fast becoming more than just a place to sleep. Zoku Amsterdam nails it by transforming a cosy abode into an office space then changes it back again. Lofts meld space efficiency with homey comforts – each boasts a kitchenette, nifty storage areas and chic decor. Your soft king-size bed, usually a hotel room centrepiece, is hidden away and accessible via a retractable staircase.
Beyond your loft, the top-floor open-plan common room is the place to get comfy and creative. Large windows lined with squishy couches and a hammock-dotted rooftop garden overlook the city. There’s also craft beer on tap, a games and music room, ping-pong table and high-speed wifi. The grab-and-go store offers tasty snacks or you can enjoy the breakfast buffet at one of the long communal tables and head to the bar in the afternoon for bevvies, olives and cheese plates.
Zoku also offers co-work memberships to local creative types, so you’re not only going to be surrounded by tourists either. Regular events, from acoustic music sessions to travel writing workshops, bring visitors and locals together.
Climbing into a saddle is a befitting way to exploring a rugged country steeped in history and legends. Meet your Freerein guide and get acquainted with your steed – you’ll be responsible for your horse’s care for the coming days – before you set out on your ride. On the four-day Welsh Prince Trail ride, you’ll begin by cantering along the velvet trails that score the Begwyns and Mynydd Epynt and overlook the Wye Valley, a breathtaking patchwork of greens, woodlands and babbling rivers.
Breathe in the fresh air as you climb Aberedw Hill, cross into the valley to Llanbedr Hill then walk the line at Hergest Ridge, the border between England and Wales. After a full day in the saddle, wind down beside a crackling fire and fill up on wholesome nosh at a cosy inn or bed and breakfast.
There are shorter rides available, and for those experienced on horseback, there’s also a number of self-guided riding tours available.
Sure, you may have sauntered in the temperate, tropical waters with humpback whales in Australia or Hawaii but swimming with orcas dwarfed by imposing glaciers and surrounding Norway’s icy oceans is next level exhilaration.
Both swimming with orcas and the Northern Lights are two experiences that usually feature at the top of most people’s bucket list and now you can get ‘twofer’ with eco-tourism company Majestic Whale Encounters who are offering both experiences in November.
The expedition starts as travellers embark the MS Stonstad, where six days are spent sailing through the stunning surroundings of the Norwegian Fjords before taking to the water to freely swim alongside the largest of the dolphin family – orca whales. Onboard the MS Stonstad passengers can treat themselves to a soak in the hot tub or enjoy the comforts of the central heating whilst waiting for a glimpse of the enchanting northern lights before disembarking at the town of Tromsø.
Once on land, guests will have the opportunity to participate in a husky safari and reindeer experience before retreating to the quaint cabins nestled at the base of Tromsø’s breathtaking mountains for a warming aquavit, seagull egg, or tørrfisk (dried cod).
The Majestic Whale Encounters’ Norway tour package includes six days onboard with all transfers, meals, orca swim, reindeer encounter, husky safari, Northern Lights tour and three nights accommodation in Tromsø. Get packing!
We’re bombing across a rocky, jet black plateau that looks like the kind of other-worldly place NASA would explore with a wheeled robot. “Do you want to know something about this road?” our guide asks us with a sly wink. “It’s a new road – but there was a problem. It passed through elf territory. So when the government built it they left gold as compensation to the elves. The gold was eventually taken away. It must have been the elves – who else would take it? At least that’s the story I was told!”
My girlfriend and I are in Iceland for a bit of quiet away from the urban crush of London. We’ve been told that this is one of the cleanest and greenest destinations worldwide. I wonder if we’ll see a clean-living elf recycling his rubbish by the side of the road.
I chuckle at the guide and turn to look out of the window at the bright northern sun rising over this scruffy lunar landscape just outside Reykjavik – it’s the very first glimpse of Iceland visitors get as their plane lands at Keflavik International Airport. We’re crossing the volcanic black Reykjanesskagi Peninsula at the south-western tip of Iceland to immerse ourselves in the country’s most famous tourist attraction.
The fact that a country’s most famous tourist attraction is a bubbling cauldron of geothermal energy says a lot about modern Iceland. This is a place where, the occasional aluminium smelter notwithstanding, the environment really matters. The natural world is literally the heart and soul of the island. The Icelanders realised long before green issues became fashionable in the 1990s that it was essential to protect their land to ensure their very survival. Now they use it in their tourism marketing too.
We screech into the empty car park of this volcanic Disneyland – the Blue Lagoon. It’s early and we’re the first tour bus in town. Lately, Iceland’s tourism has been promoting this isolated country at the very tip of Europe as a green utopia. They’ve whipped up sleek TV adverts showing hot Scandinavian couples paddling in bubbling geothermal pools; all of it backed by a stirring soundtrack of Sigur Rós – but more on the island’s music scene later.
Kitted out with trunks and towel, I strip off and wash myself down – getting into a pool in Iceland while dirty is like farting at the dinner table. You’ll be castigated for it. Cleaned up, I brave the icy wind blowing across the alfresco complex and make a dash for the hot spa pool. I wade in and feel the warm water cover me like a blanket.
The Blue Lagoon is not like anywhere I’ve been before. You won’t forget the blue-tinted, mineral-rich water heated to 40ºC by the earth’s magma, the steam clouds rising from the pools, the chilly breeze and the modern wooden pavilion where tourists buy souvenirs, eat lunch and get changed. My girlfriend rubs the famous silica mud onto my face and I wonder how many visits it will take to transform me into a more handsome human specimen, like the macho inhabitants
of the island, who all seem descended from muscular Vikings.
The Blue Lagoon, though thrilling, is in some ways a ruse – the water is essentially the excess outfall from the Svartsengi Power Station next door. But that’s Iceland for you; they make the best of what they’ve got. In much the same way that they ferment dead shark and then sell it to tourists as a delicacy called hakari – despite US superchef Anthony Bourdain saying it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted.
Geothermal power, though, is a green Icelandic trump card. The power station, which slips from view as we head back towards the centre of Reykjavik, is one of five that power a quarter of the kettles in the entire country and provide almost all the house heating, plus hot water from the tap. Most of the rest of the island’s power comes from hydro and wind. Eventually the government wants the nation to be 100 per cent free of fossil fuel power. No other country in our lifetime will ever come close to that.
But no other country is like Iceland. As we shoot through the low-rise suburbs of the capital city, it looks a bit like Oslo or Copenhagen. But fiercely proud Iceland still ploughs its own furrow. Its greatest shame is whaling, totally at odds with the environmental image it wants to portray, and tourism authorities would love to make the fishing lobby pack up and go home. You can take a boat trip out to the bay to watch majestic minke playing and wonder why the country still hunts them. Perhaps it’s partly because Icelanders are so independent.
Before the banking crisis in 2008, Iceland was at full steam ahead in its own weird economic miracle. It was famed for its rich citizens and high prices. Prices have dropped somewhat, but when I hand over a fistful of krónur for a beer, it still sends my pulse racing. “How much?” I mumble in my head. But the same go-it-alone mindset, which caused Iceland to inflate a reckless economic bubble, also allowed it to install kilometres of cycle lanes in the city, promote recycling and resist industrial development to give it some of the cleanest air and safest streets you’ll find. They did things their way, for better or worse. The singer Björk started a fund to help support green industry in the country and the city’s new tourist motto is ‘pure energy’.
Back in the city, we take a stroll round central Reykjavik to explore more. Seagulls flutter all around in the sky above. The streets are so clean you could eat your dinner off them. This small capital of low-rise, slat-panelled buildings painted in primary colours, as if by up-beat school kids, is easy to negotiate. It’s really just a big village. We pass multicoloured recycling boxes everywhere, and clean parks. We swing by the Thermal Beach – open May to August every year at the end of the domestic airport’s little runway, where hot springs heat the sea water and sand is imported from North Africa. There are hundreds of pools and ‘hot pots’ – hot tubs – scattered around this spa-mad city. We skirt the serene Tjörnin, a lake in the city’s centre surrounded by lush green grass. Cyclists and joggers are burning the calories off, a Scandinavian phlegmatic look painted on their faces. Renting a bike is easy and the city produces cycle path maps to get you from A to B. We agree to hire a bike next time we’re in town, but this time take the next best alternative: walking the wide pavements.
Trundling along the city’s main street, Laugavegur, my girlfriend’s eye is taken by a different type of recycling. The many vintage stores on the street compete with up-market boutiques for the city’s fashion-conscious girls. I look up and down the street at the handsome men and beautiful women joking around and speaking in such a deliciously tongue-tangling way to one another.
In view of the monumental concrete church tower of the Hallgrímskirkja, we stop in for a drink at Kaffibarinn – a top little bar that Blur’s Damon Albarn apparently loved so much he bought a share in it. An Anglophile sort of place, its sign looks like a London Underground roundel, but there’s plenty of Icelandic spirit inside. We sample shots of Brennivín (aka Black Death), a fiery, potatoey, vodka substitute that puts hairs on your chest. As the afternoon ticks on, the booze begins to kick in, and a group of local men burst into an impromptu rendition of a traditional sea shanty – a gruff baritone lament for the high seas. It sends tingles up my spine.
Music runs through the veins of Icelanders. It’s a national obsession that culminates each October with the Iceland Airwaves festival. Last year saw the new breed of Icelandic bands such as Amiina playing alongside US, European and Scandinavian talent. For a country of barely more than 300,000 people, Iceland boasts an impressive collection of modern bands like For a Minor Reflection, and the wonderful party-starting pop act FM Belfast, whose songs seem to be on in every shop and bar we visit over our weekend.
There’s an even more famous star in town this weekend though. Yoko Ono fell for the island because of its commitment to green energy and because it doesn’t have an army. On the anniversary of what would have been John Lennon’s 60th birthday, we watch Ono perform a concert with her and John’s son, Sean Lennon, at a concert hall. Ono tells of how much she loves Iceland, and the crowd whoop and cheer “I love you!” at her. The atmosphere crackles. In many ways the concert is as much a tribute to the free-spirited, eco-conscious islanders as it is to Lennon’s memory.
Ono’s other tribute to John and to Reykjavik is a boat-ride away, and it’s our final date with this loveable, liveable city. We take an eight-minute boat ride across the harbour to the tiny island of Videy.
The day is fading fast and the Atlantic wind whips across my face. I look down at the clear harbour water, my eyes straining to see fish or whales, but I’m beaten by the lack of light. Still, out here on the gently rolling waves, the air is as fresh and pure as any I’ve ever breathed. They should bottle it.
After a 15-minute walk over low green hillocks of Videy, and past a charming old priory, we are faced with a pillar of light shooting up into the night sky as far as the eye can see. The Imagine Peace Tower is, aptly, powered by geothermal energy and has become a new icon of green Reykjavik – a constant reminder of peace and love. With the words ‘imagine peace’ inscribed into its stone base in many languages, its light is visible all over the city. And that beam of light stands for peace, for ecology, for friendship and for fun – all the characteristics that Reykjavik has in spades.
When it comes to Finland, ski slopes and saunas are two things that are synonymous with the territory. But what about a sauna, built into a gondola floating above a snow-slathered mountain? Throw in some heavy metal music and traditional karelian pies (they’re filled with rice or mashed potato normally and topped with hard-boiled eggs), and you have yourself the ultimate Finnish experience.
Get your Finn on at Sport Resort Ylläs, where snow bunnies can unwind in the Ylläs 1 Gondola after a day carving up the slopes. The world’s first suspended sauna cruises a two-kilometre line, treating up to four riders at a time with 20 minutes of spectacular views of Lapland’s powder-white landscape.
Skiers looking for extra respite should book a two-hour package and soak in the outdoor hot tub at Café Gondola 718 (where there’s another sauna if you haven’t got sweaty enough), situated on the mountaintop. It can be enjoyed privately by up to a dozen guests.
Calling all wine lovers! All aboard the train des vignes – otherwise known as the vineyard train – which coasts past the stunning vineyard terraces in Lavaux. A UNESCO World Heritage Site home to 800 hectares of sprawling vineyards, complete with a backdrop of the Savoy and Valais Alps, this regional train from Vevey station to Puidoux-Chexbresoffers is your ticket to immersing yourself in Switzerland’s wine country.
Alight at Chexbres-Village Station, where you’ll find a number of walking trails that weave among the beautiful terraces. Prepare to send your tastebuds into a frenzy as you walk along a signposted trail that tells the story of the local vineyard here, including the yummy grape varieties that can be found. For those who aren’t so keen on tackling the incline by foot, the Lavaux Panoramic, a train with wheels. Cruise from Chexbres-Village along skinny roads that wend among the grapevines while learning about the region and enjoying the landscape.
There’s also the Lavaux Express, which chugs along a loop among the neatly manicured vine fields from Lutry and Cully. For the few who make the journey here, the local winegrowers often allow visitors the opportunity to sample their wines in their cellars. The best part? Due to limited production, Swiss wines are often not exported, which makes quaffing a fine drop here an even more exclusive affair.
Whether you’re simply travelling from the end of one country to its other, crossing the English Channel or searching for a longer adventure – one that will have you feeling as though you’ve stepped back to another era – the best way to get around Europe is by train.
Watch the countryside change outside your window, meet people from around the world and enjoy relaxed hospitality on the way to somewhere new and exciting. Plus, you surely have to be in favour of any method of long-distance transportation that allows you to avoid the clamour and stress of an airport. Here, we’ve found some classic European rail journeys that will take you to the continent’s finest destinations.
There’s no doubt about it: Portugal is experiencing a moment. Everyone you talk to wants to go there, and that’s why you should book early if you’re keen to get on board The Presidential. They don’t call it that for nothing – kings, presidents, heads of state and popes have all travelled on this train, the jewel in the crown of the country’s railway, during the past century.
These days it offers a mouth-watering journey where guests can experience sumptuous meals prepared by incredible chefs from Portugal and further afield. The culinary talents in 2019’s departures between 20 September and 26 October include Henrique Sá Pessoa (two Michelin stars), Oscar Goncalves (one Michelin star), Leandro Carreira, Alexandre Silva (2012 winner of Top Chef), Óscar Gonçalves, Nuno Mendes and Bruno Rocha, as well as rising stars André Lança Cordeiro and Pedro Pana Bastos.
Of course, you’ll need to make a decision on which option you’re going to take. The first is a nine-hour trip. Entitled the Presidential Experience, it includes a return journey between Sao Bento and Vesuvio, a four-course gourmet lunch with matched wines and an excursion to taste port at Quinto do Vesuvio.
There’s also a two-day Escapade Pack from Sao Bento to Duoro – think the Presidential Experience with added grape stomping in one of the world’s last stone pits and an overnight stay at Six Senses Duoro Valley, a nineteenth-century manor house overlooking vineyards that’s been transformed into a luxury resort.
For maximum extravagance, book the three-day Premium Pack. You’ll begin in Porto, where you’ll indulge in meals at some of the city’s best restaurants, take private tours of the country’s premier modern art museum, Fundacio Serralves, and grand concert hall Casa de Musica. Then it’s on to the train where you’ll embark on a wonderful two-day exploration of Vesuvio and the Duoro Valley.
If you look up the word efficiency in the dictionary, there’s a photograph of a Swiss train right next to it. They run on time, they go everywhere and with the ultra-convenient Swiss Travel Pass you can jump on any public train, bus or ferry and explore to your heart’s content.
Of course, the million-euro question is which train to choose. Check out the suggested routes for the Ultimate Grand Train Tour of Switzerland to help make your decision a little easier. The experts do recommend allocating between four and eight days to your train tour to take in a huge variety of the landscapes and experiences on offer throughout this fascinating country. There are eight different routes in all, covering 1,200 kilometres and crossing all four of Switzerland’s language regions. Each one offers a journey of discovery, rolling through jaw-dropping scenery and also delivering travellers to lesser known towns and villages. Get a better understanding of the country by matching your timetabling to local festivities or events.
Still stuck? Here are some of our favourites. At the top of the hit list is the Bernina Express, which travels between St Moritz and Lugano on an elevated journey across the Swiss Alps. It negotiates 55 tunnels and 196 bridges along the way, follows the edge of Lake Como and stops at Alp Grüm, a restaurant accessible only by train.
Lovers of the high life might also like to board the Glacier Express, which passes through charming towns, across steep glaciers, past waterfalls and along Switzerland’s very own Grand Canyon, the Rhine Gorge. We know the word spectacular gets bandied about an awful lot, but it really is the only way to describe this scenic route from St Moritz to Zermatt.
Then there’s the GoldenPass MOB Panoramic linking Lucerne and Interlaken, gateway to the country’s adventure capital.
There are certainly far more places to see and trains to catch, and you can get one of the local experts at Great Train Journeys to organise an entire itinerary, including accommodation, for you.
It’s one of the largest of its kind in the world and Hardangerfjord, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to Norway’s mountainous interior, is a sight a visitor will never forget. In parts, it is 900 metres deep and is blessed with natural wonders like thundering waterfalls and spectacular peaks.
If you want to set your full attention to its many wonders, book the Hardangerfjord in a Nutshell tour. Operating from May to September, this round trip can be done in one day, but why rush? It’s much better to slow right down, stretch the journey out to three days, and enjoy it all.
Along the way you’ll join a boat cruise on the fjord and a coach tour through countryside that explores delightful villages, like Ulvik, typical of Western Norway. You’ll also go on a sightseeing side trip that takes in the Vøringsfossen waterfall and the Norwegian Nature Center.
But there are plenty of other adventures that will reveal the region’s unique offerings. Take a guided snowshoe hike to Trolltunga, which juts out high over Ringedalsvatnet lake. Fjord safaris take visitors out on the water in rigid inflatable boats, where they can see seals and seabirds, as well as marvel at the sheer walls of rock that erupt from the waterline. Or perhaps you’d prefer to power a similar journey yourself. At Ulvik, join a guided kayak tour where, once you’ve paddled to an isolated island in the fjord, you’ll be taught basic survival skills, like how to start a fire and identify edible plants.
There are many other options for this train trip, too, including starting your return journey in Oslo and doing a one-way trip between Bergen and Voss.
On Svalbard, the remote Norwegian archipelago halfway between Europe and the North Pole, it’s illegal to die. Which, for most travellers, of course, isn’t a deal breaker. In fact, it could be reassuring bearing in mind this is the land of the polar bear. It’s also forbidden, my guide was telling me, to leave the settlement without a gun in case you run into a spot of bear-shaped bother.
I am on a cheery whistle-stop tour of the main settlement, Longyearbyen, before joining my ship for a two-week Arctic voyage around this glacier-fringed, far-flung outpost and the east coast of Greenland with wilderness experts Aurora Expeditions.
The extreme below-zero temperatures are the reason for the death ban – the corpses don’t decompose. Scientists exhuming bodies two decades ago collected live samples of the influenza virus, which wiped out five per cent of the planet’s population in 1918. Add the threat of avalanches, permanent darkness for four months of the year and the fact that 60 per cent of the land mass is glacier, 27 per cent bare rock and only 13 per cent vegetation. Life here is tough.
But to visit? Svalbard has a surreal appeal and a desolate, spellbinding beauty. This is life on the edge. Think Twin Peaks or the twilight world of eerie Nordic noir thriller Fortitude, which was, in fact, set in Svalbard, although it was filmed in Iceland.
The brightly coloured wooden houses are built on stilts to preserve the permafrost, northern lights viewing is big business, you can go dog-sledding, bask in the midnight sun during summer and the stellar wildlife-watching isn’t a hard sell. I wander through Longyearbyen’s award-winning museum for a crash course on the archipelago’s geology, flora and fauna until it’s time to board the boat.
On this occasion, I’m travelling on the Polar Pioneer, a Soviet-era research vessel that will retire with Aurora Expeditions at the end of 2019. The purpose-built, state-of-the-art, ice-class expedition vessel, the Greg Mortimer (named after the company’s co-founder), will replace her for future expeditions, offering a ship with green credentials and a patented X-bow design for added stability as it slices through polar seas. After more than 27 years pioneering small group adventures across the planet’s wildest locations, the future for Aurora Expeditions is greener, sleeker and a good deal swankier than its predecessors.
Life onboard is relaxed and the voyage begins with team introductions, from expedition leader Dr Gary Miller, the Russian crew, the naturalists and the photography and kayaking guides. There’s also the compulsory polar bear safety and environmental briefings, lifeboat drills and crucial seasickness advice from the ship’s doctor, before we cast off for Isfjord under baby blue skies.
Each morning the Puffin Post, slotted through the cabin doors, outlines the plan for the day – including Zodiac cruises and beach landings – along with a recap of the previous day’s highlights, the ship’s position, a useful Russian phrase and an inspiring quote. It’s the only form of news you get after the
Longyearbyen 4G falls away, forcing you into a digital detox.
Our voyage offers two days to explore Svalbard’s northwest coast and fjords – it is a great taster of the archipelago, and we manage to cram in a smorgasbord of highlights.
Bundled up like Michelin men, we clamber down the gangway at Kongsbreen for our first Zodiac cruise. The water is the colour of a cappuccino, bobbing with brash ice and playful bearded seals, and the mountains that surround the glacier are a rusty red Devonian sandstone. At Ossian Sarsfjellet we land on the shore then hike up a hill as Svalbard reindeer graze the slopes.
The mist-wreathed island of Ytre Norskøya was once a hub for the Dutch whaling industry in the 17th century, when the waters ‘boiled’ with bowhead whales. Skirting around piles of rocks, makeshift graves above the frozen ground and a Zealander’s ancient skull, we wander across the mossy tundra.
As we tramp uphill a family of arctic foxes scampers across the slope, while over the cliff’s edge we spy perky puffins perched precariously on a narrow ledge.
Sailing on to Hamiltonbukta, the Zodiac cruise takes us past cliffs of cacophonous guillemots before edging towards the face of a glacier as huge chunks of ice crash into the water. The crackling sound of the radio fills the cold air as we fill sacks with old fishing nets and plastics for the Clean Up Svalbard initiative. It’s the news we’d all been waiting for – a yacht anchored in a nearby fjord has spotted a mother polar bear and her cub sleeping on the tundra.
It’s our first polar bear sighting for this trip. With binoculars, and an air of excitement, we scour the slope, only just able to make out a buttery smudge against the scree. All too soon, it’s time to leave, the captain pointing our bow across the ocean to Greenland.
Our days at sea are filled with lectures and photography workshops. Biologist Ryan Burner gives a presentation on bird migration. Huddled in the lecture theatre we learn about the arctic tern, the mightiest migrant, which travels from pole to pole each year, escaping the Arctic winter for balmier southern summer seas.
Naturalist Roger Kirkwood spins tales of Arctic marine mammals and our impact on them, from the times of whalers, sealers and walrus-hunters to current-day environmental factors. These accounts feature animals like the Greenland shark, which can live for up to 500 years, and hooded seals, which we’d seen lounging on ice floes. I learn that the male hooded seal inflates a red septum out of one nostril to attract a female. It sounds like quite the party trick.
The crossing is mercifully calm, the sea flat and glassy, with a cold current creating an eerie Arctic phenomenon: a fogbow, which is a white arc infused with light. Through the haze, Greenland makes its appearance.
The world’s largest non-continental island sprawls over 2,165,000 square kilometres, 80 per cent of it ice cap. In terms of scale it’s off the charts. Greenland’s fjords are sailed by glacial bergs the size of skyscrapers, while the trees – dwarf birch and arctic willow – are just centimetres high.
Our first landing is at the aptly named Myggebugta, or Mosquito Bay, a Sirius Patrol hut standing sentinel on the shore. Founded during the Second World War to defend northeast Greenland, the sledge patrol was made up of nine Danes, one Norwegian and two Greenlanders. It was disbanded at the end of the war but reinstated in 1950 by the Danish government. Today, its role is military surveillance and policing the Northeast Greenland National Park.
After a quick snoop around the wooden hut we set off across tundra sown with blooming bog saxifrage and up hills in search of musk ox, shaggy relics of the last ice age and Greenland’s largest grazing mammal. Our guides are armed in case we happen across polar bears, and our eyes are on high alert for any sign of animal life. Insects, however, are the only other creatures we find as we reach the summit. With the sun beating down on us, we take a moment to observe the peaceful panorama of the bay below.
The ship drifts through a sun-kissed afternoon to Kap Humboldt where we find a trapper’s hut, ransacked by a polar bear, and then on to Blomsterbugten, or Flower Bay, where we spot wolf tracks and the remnants of fox traps left by Norwegian hunters. But it’s not until we reach Nanortalik’s paleo-eskimo site that we spot a lone musk ox, which bolts like a shaggy mammoth across a carpet of billowing bog cotton. These primeval creatures once roamed as far south as Kansas, but now natural populations can only be found in northern Canada and Greenland. Hoping to track down a herd, we walk across the tussocky tundra, trying to stay down wind until, hunkering down in the grass, we gaze on a grazing herd. We hardly dare to breathe.
Icebergs aren’t nearly as hard to find. In Scoresbysund, the world’s largest fjord system, a labyrinth of waterways, we cruise through Iceberg Alley near Rode Island. It’s a jaw-dropping spectacle of soaring pillars, arches and ice caves, sculpted into outlandish shapes.
We’re anchoring off Ittoqqortoormiit, home to 350 east Greenlanders and around 100 sled dogs. The town was built in 1924 by a Dane, Ejnar Mikkelsen, before Greenlanders from the village of Ammasalik, 800 kilometres south, arrived to settle the area a year later.
Hunting was originally the mainstay of its economy, but now the village relies on tourism (there’s a small museum and guesthouse, which offers dog sled tours, hiking and fishing trips), although locals still export sealskin and polar bear pelts. Hunting restrictions are in place but the village has a quota of 35 polar bears a year.
We’re starting to develop berg-blindness and have overdosed on ice, but we’re not prepared to give up on sighting a bear up close. “It’s not over till it’s over,” Gary reminds us.
And he’s right. At 5.30am on our last morning his voice crackles over the intercom: “We have bears! Zodiacs launching in 30 minutes.”
Scrambling out of our bunks, we grab our life jackets and make our way on deck, and there, lumbering along the shore, is a polar bear drama unfolding. A large male is chasing off a younger bear, while a mother and two cubs run in the other direction.
It’s a pinch-yourself, lump-in-the-throat moment – the best day of the expedition. Puttering around Rømer Fjord in Zodiacs, we watch the bears pick at a narwhal carcass left on the shore by hunters. We keep a safe distance, but when a bear decides to take a swim, it makes the kayakers work hard to avoid doing the same. By the end of the day, the bear count reaches a greedy seven.
The next morning’s Puffin Post fittingly quotes an excerpt from Polar Bears by Dr Ian Stirling: “A wild polar bear is the Arctic incarnate. The Arctic is not a forsaken wasteland to a polar bear, it’s home.” And one that we have been privileged to share.
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