It was definitely a “wow” moment. We were on day four of our two-week Abercrombie & Kent Arctic Cruise Adventure in the Svalbard Archipelago. Our zodiacs landed on a beach where scores of huge walruses (they weigh more than 4,400 pounds) were lazing on the beach and splashing in the water, getting their fill of mollusks.
The walruses were oblivious to our camera shutters clicking. We were mesmerized. It was one of those I-can’t-believe-I’m-here-seeing-this moments. There were many on that trip—sighting a polar bear and her cubs; tooling around in a zodiac looking at the icebergs in Greenland, each a distinctive shape; the black-legged Kittiwakes on a tiny island in a fjord and the hundreds of Arctic terns famous for their commute of more than 44,000 miles every year from the Arctic to Antarctica.
