2023 Greenland Expedition - Day 5 Bjorne Øer (where the bear was killled)

Why Greenland?

This morning, massive icebergs. 

After posting the blog last night, we finally entered Scoresbysund Fjord. This map shows the heavy and old sea ice we’d been navigating through all day (yellow is ice). The fjord opens to the left of the oval marked E. (And, lucky for us, the ice in oval F has cleared out.)

As we approached the fjord, we watched a row of massive pyramid icebergs morph into several pieces as our viewing angles changed. 

We cruised slowly this morning, watching the changing landscape. Our landing destination was Bjorne Øer (“place where bear was killed” - but that was a long time ago.) It used to be a popular Inuit hunting area, but now sees more tourists than hunters. And there ain’t that many tourists.

Bjorne Øer is in the collection of little islands northwest of the boat above.

There was a series of talks and workshops offered today: Whales and Dolphins, Echolocation, and Icy You (try saying it out-loud). Echolocation was hands on, in every sense of the word. People volunteered to be blindfolded and navigated around objects in the room by listening to clapping in response to their cues, or learned to sense orientation of sound pulses in water when both their vision and hearing were blocked.

Evocative of The Wall: Winter is coming.

We arrived at Bjorne Øer around 4:30 PM. It was 55 degrees F and 5 knot winds. After the expedition team scoped out the landing/walking areas for bears, we were allowed to land. We limited our weather gear to rain pants over jeans and our Hurtigruten expedition jackets, and still were hot. 

Our landing site is to the left, where the red jackets are unloading.

Nils, happy to be back in Greenland, awaits us atop the hill.

Red flags marking our trail - not the world’s most challenging Par 3 course. 

The tundra was squishy and rocky, with a sprinkling of tiny wildflowers and swarms of mosquitoes.

We (the proud Group 2 Snowy Owls) were the first group ashore and back to the boat today. People were still ashore at 9:15 PM, so this was a lucky break. The schedule varies with each expedition, so we’ll be the last group out tomorrow morning. No worries. They see that all 8 groups have a good experience.