Day 6 Monday
Got up around 6.15 finished packing the overnight things, shut the case and put it outside where Jake took it upstairs for disembarcation. We went upstairs to watch the boat dock, have a light breakfast of ham and cheese sandwich and tea and watch Longyearbyen get closer.. By 8 o’clock we were docked and began to disembark. We walked down the gangplank, collected out luggage and caught the bus back to The Coal Miner’s Cabins where we checked in, collected our keys and settled in. Jake and Sean’s room wasn’t ready so we waited for it to be cleaned and scrounged a second breakfast. Eventually we were all sorted, ordered a taxi and headed down to the polar bear sign. We managed to find the magnetic geocache and then walked back along the road towards the town and the bird hide. We checked out the pools along the way with the usual Arctic Terns still feeding chicks, Barnacle geese, some with quite large young and a few Purple Sandpipers and Dunlin. The bird hide is a very comfortable blue building looking out over the Adventfjord. It has benches outside, and seats and comfy sofas inside, also a sightings book. It was very pleasant in the sun. Jake found a Brent Goose among the Barnacles, the only one we saw and David watched a Phalarope drop onto a pool along the way. We walked through the industrial estate until we found a place with better views of the Grey Phalarope among the many parked skidoos with lots of ‘summer maintenance’ going on. There were also some purpose built snow machinery, parked up waiting for the snow. We slowly made our way towards the metal polar bear statue that I had visited on our first day, while David and I checked out a couple of plants he’d found. The decision was taken to go into town to find some lunch before heading to the airports pits. We found the Huskies, a tea/coffee/chocolate place with two or three friendly huskies. We ordered our drinks and had a snack, then chose to go on into town to check out the shops. One was advertising Swarovski and Zeiss, tax free so we went in to have a look. David chose to have a look at the small Swarovski scope but decided not to buy. We went in and looked in a few souvenirs shops before Brenda and I took a taxi back to the CMCs for dinner while the others walked back up. David saw us to the taxi but the others had gone so he walked up alone. We all met up in the dining room, except for David who came in later. We ordered dinner and chatted about our day before going out down the road for a geocache. David realised his bins were missing so we did a search round our table and through the outer lobby with no sign. Brenda and I walked down to bridge as the others retraced David’s steps but no sign. After a little searching we found the cache and a pen so signed it, logged it and replaced it. We walked back to our rooms and bed. David phoned the police to report his loss and was told to come to the police station at 9.00 the next morning to fill in a form and get a police incident number for the insurance. The light night and lack of blackout made it difficult to sleep, after the total blackout of the boat, eventually I put a pillow over my head, wrapped my arm around and dropped off. I didn’t wake up till 8.00!
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