We have been visiting Svalbard for the past 12 days on an ultra-luxury expedition cruise ship with the “promise” of viewing mammalian wildlife, especially polar bears.  We did see a couple of bears but from quite a distance, making the polar bear look like a little white speck. In general, there has been a lot less wildlife than expected or hoped for. In contrast, our visits to Antarctica on the very same ship, produced copious amount of wildlife daily.

We are now on our last day of the Svalbard portion of our trip, revisiting Alkhornet, a beautiful landing location with jagged mountains and plenty of seabirds. Our first visit just ten days earlier produced no wildlife sightings of note. Why are we visiting Alkhornet again?

I made the command decision to go for broke. We ignored our scheduled time slot, sneaking onto the first zodiac going ashore. The zodiac hits land and our expedition leader hops on board to brief us. “There is a fox right here on the beach.” Woohoo let’s go! No, we must hear the rest of his briefing which drones on about what we could do on land, walk here, there and everywhere. I want to see the fox! I turn to Kathryn, “there is more briefing than viewing on this trip.”

Finally, he lets us off. I scramble to get my camera ready knowing that our window to see the fox is most likely closed. They are quick and quite skittish. We scramble over pebbly terrain to get to the last reported fox location. And, oh my, he was still there and it was glorious. For the nest 20 minutes a small arctic fox performed for us.

I was kneeling, trying to get a good perspective. Then, this little guy walked right at me.

This guy was very playful.

Thoroughly satisfied, we head off up the hiking path to the far side of Alkhornet. Other than polar bears, I want to photograph wild reindeer. Perhaps we can get lucky and see one. We hike a bit, stopping to photograph tiny arctic flowers. Then, someone says there are reindeer at the hike’s end. Off we go! Not more than a few seconds later we hear the rumble of reindeer as they fly past us. I barely got the camera up to my eye to take a shot.

Reindeer family, mom, dad, and two calves leading the way. BTW, dad is the one with antlers.

Well, if I get nothing else, at least I nabbed one. We get to the end of the hike on a high windy and exposed outcropping. There are reindeer in the distance, perhaps a dozen of them. They are far away looking like our polar bear sightings. After a few moments, one of them, a male, starts to walk toward us.  We are too high, looking down upon him. This is not the best location for a compelling wildlife photo. We start to hike back, moving to lower ground. I turn around to see him slowly moving toward me. I drop to the ground and start to take pictures. For the second time in just a couple of hours we have an amazing photographic experience.

Male giving me a weird look only a reindeer would know.

Another reindeer look. What is he thinking?

Beautiful water in the background. This time he is talking to me.

That’s it. We are back on the ship heading for Greenland. I must swallow my words (along with caviar and champagne from our sail away party from Svalbard). Our last day in Svalbard was truly amazing, almost making up for not having a good polar bear encounter.