"Look for a cream-colored dot that walks"

Everyone wanted to see polar bears (called Ice Bears in Norwegian). People started asking about them even before we got on the ship. Mike said that people had "polar bear anxiety." Luckily, as Tom said, polar bears are not really white, or we would never have found them. Fortunately for the sanity of the staff, we had "high-quality" polar bear encounters early in the trip.

 

The Bear that went over the mountain

This bear was asleep when we first saw him, and when he woke up he looked us over and then headed over the ridge and disappeared into the snowbank. This was our introduction to how difficult it is to describe to someone else where a semi-invisible object in the distance is. "Look for a cream-colored dot that walks."

The best bear

This was the bear that gave us our best shots. The captain was able to get quite close without alarming it, and on a gray and overcast day, the sun suddenly came out and shone right on the iceberg, giving us wonderful dark seas in the background, blue and white ice, and turquoise water in the foreground. Even those of us with "aim and compose" cameras (the onboard preferred term for "point and shoot") could get good pictures.

At first the bear was snoozing on the ice.	It was clearly aware of us but seemed unconcerned.
Then it began a photogenic routine of rising, walking, jumping across the ice floes, and then finally settling down to watch us again.

After we had left the bear we gathered in the lounges to admire our work. One of the naturalist-photographers said that we were "chimping"--looking at our cameras, pressing buttons, and saying "ooh, ooh, ooh!"

 

The Midnight Bear

In 24-hour daylight, wildlife sightings could happen at any time, and many seemed to be around midnight. This bear, spotted around 11:30 pm of a rainy day, was unusual in that when it saw us it came TOWARDS the ship across the ice, giving us a much closer look than we could ever have achieved by moving the ship.