Iceberg graveyard. Greenland’s breathtaking Scoresby Sound ​⁠@nextleveloz Arctic pt3

G'day, we're Dave and Paula. After 40 years we took a gap year from work, bought a van and did a lap right around Australia and it was life-changing. So now we're trying to rebalance life, work, the van travel in Australia that we love and still ticking off some overseas bucket list items. Now we're on our way to the North Pole and Greenland. So we flew from Australia to Svalbard. We got on a state-of-the-art icebreaker expedition ship. We went to the North Pole, took a dip, saw polar bears and now we're heading south towards Greenland. This is why you need blackout curtains. It's half past 12 in the morning, 0030 in the morning. Look at that. G'day. G'day, g'day, g'day. Paula hasn't been chipper. No. It's just we're like almost like flat and in a bathtub but anyway, better today. Yeah, I'm better today. So today we went down there, they've sort of given us the update briefing and sort of taken us where the ship's been, where we're going through the ice, what the condition of the ice looks like and then some changes to the itinerary, you know, to try and including the marathon crew. So we're diverting a little bit for them. So a few people aren't happy about that. But anyway, the captain will do what we've experienced him doing before to maximise the opportunities and we'll be heading back through some more ice but the further south we get, we head back in more into polar bear country and towards Svalbard and the ice. So we'll see if we pick any more of those up. We'll see a little bit more of the Svalbard coast and then we head across to Greenland and Scoresby Sound. So yeah, but anyway, it's good. They keep us particularly well up to date with what they're planning and what they're thinking about. So that's very good. We're going out so much but I think I'm just going to have to go out and do some walks. Yeah, because we saw the footage, didn't we, of our polar plunge that they'd taken and yes, it's true. When I came back on shore, they tried to roll me back in to save me. That's terrible, David. Onion soup with foie gras and truffle and we have the spoon just here. Good and you? Very well, thank you. Perfect. Oh yummy. Yummy. Good. You're welcome lad. It's hot. If you want, you can sit over there. All the seats it's we're just taking in the view. It's freezing out here. You've got to be nice. So these outside seats, they're actually heated again. That's part of that recirculated heating. I can't feel it. I can feel it starting to warm up. Very good. I don't know if you can hear me. It's around onto the starboard side. We're heading south and there's a lot more wind on this side. So I'll try to get on the other side just in case we can't hear. That's a little bit better. So much good food, good wine on this cruise. You've got to get out and do some exercise. We've sort of just found that we're eating as light as we can in the morning to the half reason for lunch. Then dinner becomes optional. If you're prone to feeling a bit woozy on the water, it's good to get out and get a bit of a breather. Paul is sleeping at the moment. That's the next best thing. This is a very stable ship. Paul was feeling just a bit embarrassed. We actually think in her case, she is prone to vertigo. She's been very good for the last couple of years, but she had some quite severe vertigo a few years ago that they had to treat between the gentle rocking of the ship, the crunching through the night and the movement. But we also think she might have actually bent down to do up her shoelaces off the bed, which is sort of quite high. And that has sort of kicked in the vertigo. If you would like to do these sorts of trips, we like these because there's fewer passengers on them than the big cruise ships. This one, this one's a bit bigger out of necessity because it's an icebreaker and it's designed for the purpose. A few more passengers, a few more crew, but it's a bigger ship than what we did in Antarctica. They're quite stable, quite stable ships, but the smaller you go, you know, the more you're likely to bounce around. So if you like the idea of these sorts of trips, but you're worried about it, yeah, look, there are ways of dealing with it and getting yourself prepared beforehand. Hey G'day. G'day. What are we waiting for? The silver team to come together and go on a zodiac. There's kayakers out there. We're not kayaking today. We'll kayak at a different time. We've sort of got to hit precise times. I sort of like to keep everybody organized and keep everything organized on the expedition deck, which suits us fine. So we sort of, but you don't want to have your parkas and things on because it's too hot on board if you do it. I shouldn't have my hat on. So we walk down in our socks, in our warm socks and all that sort of stuff and and just with our jackets loosely done up and our life jackets on loosely and we've got to put our boots on. Swipe off. Yep. Onto the zodiac. Yep. And out. Yep. You're an old hand at this now, aren't you? Pull it around. It's been a little while though. Yeah, but you've done it in the Kimberley. You've done it in Antarctica and now we're just doing ice floes in the Arctic for a bit of an afternoon. Today we're gonna, we're gonna spend 45 minutes on the water. We'll try to find the ice and just say goodbye to the ice one last time. Yeah. Because tomorrow, so we are, currently we are 84, sorry, 84 degrees north and we're gonna go south and we will come at the edge of the ice around 82 degrees south, er north. So well that was a weird, rude wake up, wasn't it? It was a little bit. I'm gonna wake it up because there's a polar bear outside. So the cat then came up to the PA whispering. He came up here, he was whispering, it's funny. Dear passengers, dear passengers, if you would like to pull on your parkas and come out to the deck. He said it with a French accent but I'm not going to do that because that would be mocking. I can't do it very well but, but yes, come out to the deck and there is a polar bear just off to our port side that's now actually lying down. So we'll show you some pictures. It was, it was a little bit further off than a couple of the other ones but anyway, that's another day, another polar bear. The captain moved the ship to give us a better view and we all watched for quite a long time. Most people sort of thought that was it, moved off. We went to have some breakfast and for some reason I grabbed my camera and thought I just wanted to go back out and then I caught this. Unfortunate for the polar bear but fortunate for the seal he missed. Check out this perfect day. It is just absolutely glorious. Cold but it's absolutely glorious. Got the seabirds coming back and then yet another call from the bridge. A few more hours sailing and we saw another polar bear. I was actually doing some work at the desk and looked up and saw this one out of the window before the bridge did. The ship came to a dead stop but this time the ship was drifting a little bit with the current. The ice flow was drifting towards us and the bear just got a little bit concerned. Probably the first time that we have seen one of the bears a little bit concerned so he decided to put a bit of distance between us and but just as well because he found a snack along the way. With a seal flipper left over by another polar bear and a bit of distance between us everything fell back into balance. We are going to go for one hour. We are going to try to follow the ice edge and to go inside and play with the ice a little bit. That's it for the ice now. It's been a great day. The polar bears including one hunting managed to get out on the zodiacs again today and we were supposed to kayak. Paula's not feeling that chipper and so rather than sort of risk that we just sort of said look it's just not worth not feeling that well. So we gave her a break and headed out on the zodiac and you know the ship sort of stopped for hours with those polar bears as we watched them. So I think three sets today. Yeah it's quite incredible and that and the zodiac and we we lose the ice from now on so we head out of the ice the sea ice and head towards Svalbard. Hello. Hello. This is probably the the place that we've come to eat the most isn't it? Yeah it is. So on the top deck and it's sort of we'll go to the formal tonight. Paula spends every minute of her day in there. I do not. Morning Marvin. Morning. Could I have a flat white coffee please? Just in a cup. And I'll have an espresso. Espresso yeah thank you. So this is Spitsbergen which is sort of the northern island of Svalbard. We're heading down to the Magdalen fjords and there's some people on the boat who are actually going to be getting off. I don't know I've got no idea how they get anywhere from there and we should be doing some either some landings or zodiac this afternoon. Look at this everyone. Yeah I'm doing something crazy. I haven't got my jacket on but it's just so astonishingly stunningly beautiful here. This is Magdalen fjord and yeah just multiple glaciers on the landscape. Yeah yeah it's just brilliant absolutely brilliant. Just what we can see just from the balcony of our room it's incredible. It's just absolutely insane as we've said at so many places and yeah it was clearly so different to home but just stark and beautiful and you can imagine the brutality of these places in the winter. Stunningly beautiful and brilliant with a shiny blue sky but I just think the clouds the clouds passing across the mountains just make them look even more stunning. Yeah just brilliant absolutely brilliant. We're just in the level three the expedition deck and they sort of have two rooms have the boot room and like the waiting room to organize everybody to go on to the lander. Much more organized than the other ones where we used to just get organized in the main yeah and then come down in the main lounge right and then they'd sort of pile us all down that down the gangways and into the yeah anyway either way works. So this is the area of the old of an old whaling site dating back to the 1700s. There's old cemeteries and all sorts of things here. We've no idea what those buildings are but it's a pretty spectacular backdrop. Yeah it's been about 40 minutes here so because of the whaling that occurred over summer this area is a bit more fertile and naturally even still. Top of the ship. Where they were burning off the blubber in these two locations here. Cemetery. And they can get a bit irritable apparently so if you hear them squawking at you step away. We're going to go and see the nine. We're going to go and see the mother of all ones around the corner. This is just incredible all into one little location. Look at you. We're in our formal gear tonight. It's the officer's night it's it's white night so it's a black and white theme so even though it's an expedition ship we thought well why not. Do we look a good couple? I don't know I think we match. Well it's day 11 and we're on our way to Greenland and and it's it's foggy but the sea is just it's like a bathtub I mean the sea is just it smells it is just glassy and if the fog wasn't there you'd see how smooth it is but the only thing making ripples is the ship. Yeah we've got a day at sea today and I think most of tomorrow as we cut across not so sure I think a number of us were expecting to come out of the ice and go down the Greenland coast but we also had to drop some people off at Svalbard. Yeah fortunately Magdalena Fjord was absolutely stunning so it wasn't such a bad thing. Anyway got a race to clean teeth do all that sort of stuff and we're heading down to see more of Sue Flood's amazing photos. We've been blessed we've been we're joined on this ship um by Sue Flood who's a who's just a magnificent photographer and had been a producer on some of Attenborough's programs and those sorts of things and for those of us who sort of tinker with cameras we go to Sue Flood's lectures every couple of days for our dose of inadequacy training our dose of humility. Anyway we better head down for that cheers. The end of day 11 we're about halfway between Svalbard and Greenland it's been just absolutely tremendous sailing the fog's lifted it's just an absolutely glorious late afternoon. As you can see there's some fog just starting to sort of roll in around the horizon so we don't know what's going to happen. Really lovely sailing and we've been doing lectures all day so which sounds boring but they've sort of been quite interesting. Had to get some exercising today though i mean there's just too much good food too much good wine we're about to go and have some more. We've got to Greenland and it's yeah again sharp and jagged and stark and secret places and snow up in the mountains and later today we'll be in the Scoresby Sound and we've spotted our first big icebergs. Now it's very cold back inside how amazing is this so we're just coming in we're just in the mouth of the Scoresby Sound which is sort of the largest fjord system in the world and what a greeting and the clouds lifted just a little bit which is fantastic and you've just got these mountains either side of the mouth just in stark contrast they just look like black and white pictures. I can assure you it is colour but yeah just just absolutely amazing and right in the middle of the Scoresby Sound there's like a pyramid feature and you might not be able to see it on the GoPro but there's this massive iceberg just floating right in the middle of the Scoresby Sound. I don't want to go back to the end of the cabin but we've got to go and do some cleaning of our gear and they disinfected before we hit green land just to stop any intercontinental spread of of anything so because we've been on some land areas and Svalbard so just got to go and clean up our gear so head back grab all that head down to the expedition deck and we will and well I'll take all of our gear down and save both of us going down and we'll just get that vacuumed and disinfected. G'day g'day everyone we're just entering Scoresby Sound on green at Greenland it's absolutely beautiful the day's overcast but it's absolutely beautiful the colours are wonderful and the icebergs too. We're going to be here for the next three days doing some adventure stuff on the kayaks and the zodiacs and it's closed quite thick this is just it's just incredible and check out the backdrop check it out it's a pretty pretty good dinner view. This is the view that we've woken up to it's been a bit rainy it was raining when we got up it's just the cloud base is lifting up a little bit but and it's not going to affect our activities today so we're going to go out kayaking. This is all the gear that we've got to wear for kayaking our thermal layers we've got double socks on we've got to wear a very sexy number out of Paris a onesie underneath and then a dry suit so that's going to be interesting getting into all of that. I don't feel like a Power Ranger I feel like a Teletubby very sexy look. There are some things people just don't want to see you know. We really wish we had the drone but we're not allowed to on this trip we heard the helicopter start up on the front deck so check out this magnificent footage as we squeeze ourselves into our dry suits and get ourselves ready for the kayak just so you know Development Roads? No definitely not. Certainly not the OTT? No. Want to give her a row? No. Kayak was just great test your marriage the kayaking. Next episode our arctic expedition comes to an end and we try to weigh up how it really stacks up against our other adventures. Made it to the top it's stunning. Okay thanks for joining us please don't forget to like and subscribe and remember 100% of our YouTube advertising revenue goes to charity.