Our day at sea passed pretty well yesterday. I was released from isolation at around 10 a.m. and we took a walk-about to get me oriented to the ship – Laura had seen much of it the day before.
It’s a beautiful ship and our cabin is amazing – it’s a panoramic suite with a curved floor-to-ceiling window for half of the outside wall and a balcony for the other half. Watch for later pictures.
Our trivia team won Seabourn caps as prizes and Laura’s “name that tune” team won power adapters (I was taking a nap for that one, as I’m not back to 100% yet – my claim to fame on the trivia team, however, involves the “Dixie Cups” – ask me over a beer or wine sometime).
In the evening, we attended a dinner with our Virtuoso hosts and several other guests, along with Udo (a naturalist and kayak specialist with Seabourn). It was fun to meet a number of new people and get to know them. The food was excellent, but I’m still going easy at this point, so I held back.
We found out that several others onboard that we’d met already, were also having some health issues during the day and into the evening. Being too early to be anything they could have caught from me, we just assumed that they were coming down with something on their own. And then Laura started getting ill overnight – she says she can picture the cold lobster in her head every time she had an issue…
Long story short, she’s isolated today and we’re unsure of whether the others’ issues are food related. Our scheduled excursion today was just a zodiac boat tour around the island to look mostly at birds, so we’re taking an off day. (I’d also refer you to our travel rules #3 & #4 – see our post from 2/2/21, if you don’t have them memorized – we always expect some type of health issue, and there are good reasons why they are two of our earliest rules).
Bear Island is a rocky outcropping in the middle of nowhere in the Barents Sea about halfway between the coast of Norway and Svalbard. The birds were swarming all along the cliffs and I could get some pretty good pictures from our balcony (see above). The bird specialist onboard had a great talk yesterday to explain the species we’d see and their nesting habits, so it made for an interesting day.
We shove off early this afternoon in order to reach the main islands of Svalbard by tomorrow morning. It’s overcast and cold (about 35 degrees) and windy when you get away from the leeward side of the island. We are definitely in the Arctic. Let’s hope for a quick recovery for Laura and better days ahead.
evertstouring 