There’s a visceral thrill like no other in spotting your first polar bear. So the sight of a mother with two cubs scampering along behind her on the ice left most of us speechless. The bear, an alpha predator in this frozen landscape, was completely unfazed by our presence. This life-changing moment happened on an eight-night expedition that took me from the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard up into the pack ice, just eight degrees of latitude from the North Pole.
Not many ships can venture here, which is what makes Ponant’s new icebreaker, Le Commandant Charcot, named after the revered 19th-century French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot, so special. The ship, powered by giant batteries and liquefied natural gas, is built to cut through the ice.
As such, it can head way beyond the standard expedition cruise route around Spitsbergen, the largest
