Bird Cliffs Fjord Safari

The Bird Cliffs Fjord Safari is a boat trip on Isfjorden from Longyearbyen. It runs in an open RIB boat, a Polarcirkel speedboat, and mixes bird watching with visits to two abandoned mining towns. The route heads west to the bird cliff Fuglefjella, which lies between Longyearbyen and Barentsburg, then goes on to Grumant and finally to Hiorthhamn, across the fjord from Longyearbyen.

At Fuglefjella the cliffs rise from a narrow stone beach to 500 metres and hold thousands of migratory birds each summer. Brünnich's Guillemot is among the most numerous, and its colonies around the archipelago number over 100,000 pairs. Grumant is a Russian mining town that has stood empty since 1961, with a few houses left on a steep mountainside. The guests take a break there. Hiorthhamn is another abandoned mining town that once had barracks, a blacksmith, stores, a kitchen, a sawmill, a hospital, housing, offices and mining installations. Depending on the time and weather, the boat may land guests ashore there before returning to Longyearbyen.

The tour lasts three hours. A guide collects guests at their hotel and drives them to the expedition centre, where they receive a flotation suit, a life jacket and goggles before walking down to the harbour. The page rates the difficulty 3 out of 5, for people of average fitness. The age limit is 8 years. The tour runs from May to August.