September 15

After a long day, we arrived at Longyearbyen airport with a delayed flight from Tromso at 02.15 in the middle of the night.
After transport to SAS Polar hotel the clock had past 4 before we could go to bed.

September 16

We woke-up to a brilliant weather.
The landscape outside were very different.
The mountains were covered with a thin snow-layer, while the valleys were snow-free.
Temperature was -2 centigrade.
After breakfast we walked to the village and visited the Tourist-information.
At the Tourist information we got a lot of useful information regarding bear safety, guided tours and tours on your own.
The girl at the tourist office was very helpful and could easily answer every question we could come up with, Thank You!
We decided to make tours on our own and walk to the nearest sports store to rent a rifle.
The one that was put into our hands was a Mauser manufactured in Sweden 1940! The rifle should be handy to have if we should get into close
contact with polar bears (however not for the bears).We felt very confident when we left the village, carrying a rifle
and the polar bears we saw on the postcards, at the post-office, looked very cute.
We walked westwards and climbed the plateau nearest Longyearbyen.
We had our lunch on a cliff with a magnificent view over the Longyear-valley.
We crossed the plateau and continued uphill on the ridge at the Nordenskiold mountain.
A polar-ptarmigan made a perfect landing next to us and seemed to be very curious.
He didn't seem to have the least respect for us or our rifle.
Maybe he could tell how experienced hunters we were?
When we were At the peak 789m we stopped to photograph.
The view was fantastic and the weather just perfect!
When we descended we went towards Longyearbreen (the Longyearglacier).
The terrain along the side of the glacier was a bit tricky.
The glaciers seemed to push enormous piles of stones and rocks ahead of them and they were very slippery to walk on.
We reached the hotel at 9pm, a quick pizza and to bed (we had to try and catch up the sleep we missed last night).

September 17

Brilliant weather this day too!
We decided to cross Adventelva (the Adventriver). The river creates a delta consisting of 7-8 streams.
We tried to find the shallowest parts of the streams to avoid getting wet.
We used pieces of wood to make primitive bridges when we crossed the streams.
We were quite successful, just one foot out of four were wet after the river crossing, and I was luckily not the owner of the wet one.
At a distance we saw a few animals with yellowish fur.
What was that? Polar-bears?
A quick look trough my binoculars and then we could relax.
A herd of polar-reindeers was grazing where the Malarvalley meets the Advent-valley.
The reindeers were not at all worried about us or our Mauser from 1940 so we could get quite close to them.
We continued into the Malarvalley and turned right towards the Blekumglacier.
We had to pass one kilometre of blocky terrain before we reached the glacier.
We followed the glacier some distance before we decided to turn back.
The mountains were shading the sun in the valley and the wind was really cold.
We returned to the Malarvalley and had our sandwiches on a sunny slope with a nice view over the valley.
A flock of geese flew trough the valley, and entertained us during our coffee-brake.
We walked back the same way we came, and the evening-light was really nice when we reached the advent-river.
When we passed the river this time we didn't bother to find the shallowest parts.
Our tactics this time were high speed and long steps when we were crossing the streams, if you are quick enough
the water will not find the way into your boots was our theory behind this tactics.
We were back at the hotel at 9 pm and to be honest I found myself to be a little bit tired.

September 18

This day it was overcast.
Good! We needed to take it easy after two day-tours by foot.
We rented Mountain bikes and cycled the road westwards.
Then we followed the road until it ended near a closed-down coal-mine in the Bearvalley.
We returned to the hotel at 4 pm and had a sauna to warm up after a chilly day.
We had dinner at the restaurant "Kroa".
The food was excellent and the interior decorations of the restaurant were really something extra.
Whale-bones, seal-skins and a photo-gallery from old polar-expeditions made us realize that our visit on Svalbard was a luxury one.

September 19

Perfect weather again!
We took our mountain-bikes and cycled eastwards. We had to walk a steep slope uphill until we reached Gruve 7 (mine 7).
The road ended at EISCAT radar station. We parked the bikes and continued by foot up on the mountainridge Breinosa.
We had lunch-brake over viewing the Adventvalley and the glacier foxfonna The descend back to the radar station went quickly.
We jumped on to our bikes and rolled downhill. I had to use my brakes to avoid crashing.
But I am convinced Stefan exceeded the speed limit (he is not very familiar with the use of brakes).
We stopped to take some last pictures over the Adventvalley in the eveninglight.

September 20

We had time to visit the Svalbard Museum in the morning. It was very interesting.
We saw a rifle of the same type we had rented, but the rifle at the Museum was manufactured 1942!
After lunch we took the flight southwards to Tromso. We were very happy with our holiday on Svalbard.
We had really experienced something different, even if we just had seen the area closest to Longyearbyen.
But we can be sure there is a lot more to see next time we visit Svalbard.