A former Soviet espionage ship makes a cozy base for spying on icebergs, walruses and gamboling beluga whales

In the Arctic, nature careens from the immense to the tiny. Everything else--the more human scale we tend to focus on, the one that includes the humdrum clatter of daily life--tends to disappear. It’s hard to remember that phones are ringing somewhere when you haven’t seen a utility pole for days. It’s easy to forget that there are foot-high daisies when the ones at your feet are half an inch in diameter and 3 inches tall.

Sailing for 11 summer days on a former Russian spy ship, my husband and I slipped into a world as far from the ordinary as we had ever been.

It began with a picture of a polar bear looking fetchingly up from its patch of ice. The picture arrived in the mail after we called looking for information about a cheapo one-night cruise promising a look at the midnight sun. We thought that would be a spiffy way to celebrate our big wedding anniversary coming up; but Marine Expeditions, the Canadian company advertising the trip, had something more expensive in mind for us.

Marine sent the brochure for its other cruises, and there was that polar bear atop the page describing a trip aboard an ice-reinforced Russian “research vessel.” The itinerary ran from the Manitoba port city of Churchill, in Canada, through Hudson Bay, along the coast of Baffin Island and across the Davis Strait to Greenland. Nowhere in the description did it say we would actually see a polar bear. In fact, although bear, caribou, walruses, Arctic fox and humpback and minke whales were all said to inhabit the area, the only species that followed the words “we will see” in the booklet was the white beluga whale.

We’ve been in love with wildlife-watching since we went on an African safari in the 1970s. So we decided to take the Marine trip and spend part of August cooling off in icy Arctic waters aboard the Marine Adventurer. On board, nobody even pretended the ship was anything but the Akademik Ioffe, one of several vessels built in Finland and equipped for spying with underwater sensors and radar.

The end of the Soviet empire had made the ships superfluous, and they’d been leased to Marine Expeditions to take passengers “To the Ends of the Earth,” the company motto. Its captain, crew and serving staff were all Russian.

We met the ship in Churchill after a charter flight from Ottawa. It looked rather unprepossessing, more like freighters and ferries we’ve been on than cruise ships. There wasn’t a deck chair to be seen, and what deck space there was bristled with equipment, including the rubber Zodiac craft that would be ferrying us to our landing spots and two bright-orange metal capsules that turned out to be enclosed lifeboats for survival in freezing temperatures.

So we were unprepared for what turned out to be the most spacious and comfortable cabin we’d yet seen on a ship, furnished in Scandinavian style with blond wood and a good-size writing desk, handsome cabinetry, enough shelf space for a year’s worth of reading and a big picture window. The “scientists” who lived and worked in this room for months at a time had no cause for complaint, and neither did we.

We sailed out of Churchill surrounded by hundreds of gamboling beluga whales, breaking the surface everywhere and sparkling in the bright sunshine.

Larry and I and the other 75 passengers were introduced to the ship’s routines at the welcome party in the dining room. The room resembled a mess hall more than it did a restaurant; that was the downside of the ship’s original identity as a quasi-military working vessel. (The upside were the open bridge and the beautiful, well-stocked library just beneath it.) We met Brad Rhees, the expedition leader, along with the rest of the tour staff and the lecturers who would be providing talks on the history and natural science of the Arctic.

Graham Bell was the shipboard ornithologist, a passionate birder from England who would show that he was not above making an utter fool of himself in the interest of making his subject entertaining. Canadian Rob Reader would be describing the history of Arctic exploration with an endearing mixture of wry humor and total commitment. And Stephen Spittler, a Washington state school principal, was charged with educating us about polar bears and other marine mammals we hoped to encounter.

Given the offbeat itinerary, we were not surprised to find ourselves traveling with an oddly assorted group. Many were Canadians, with a smattering of Europeans, Californians, Midwesterners and Northeasterners, all united in our willingness to leave the heat of midsummer for temperatures in the 40s and 50s in search of icebergs, walruses and perhaps a polar bear or two. As on our previous nature cruises, the age range tended to be mid to late 40s and up. The only organized activities, apart from the meals, were lectures and landings.

The Zodiacs were not quite as simple to board as the ones we’d gotten used to on other trips. Here, our knee-high rubber boots, or Wellies as Graham called them, were all that stood between us and hypothermia as we clambered out of the tough dinghies and onto rocky shores often strewn with bleached whale bones and other animal skeletons.

In addition to the Wellies, there were the required life jackets, gloves for dealing with wet handrails and ropes, hats for the windy rides even when it wasn’t that cold, and rain gear for us as well as our cameras, since the Zodiacs create a lot of spray, especially when piloted with the zeal shown by the crew. We were always happiest when our Zodiac driver was the assistant expedition leader, Tim Soper, a young Brit studying to be an oceanographer. He sensed immediately that I was terrified of losing my balance the first time I had to make the perilous transition from the yard-square platform at the bottom of the metal stairs swinging alongside the ship to the bobbing Zodiac on the water. “Just put your weight on me as you step down,” he said. “You’ll be fine.” So I did, and I was.

Our destination one morning, after a sunny day steaming through Hudson Bay, was Walrus Island, little more than a dot on the map. The island was teeming with them, and we knew that the cruise that had come through three days earlier on the way from Greenland to Churchill had spotted two polar bears on the island. Sure enough, as we rounded a bend, there, right on the shoreline, was a big white polar bear that stayed put as Tim got closer and closer. Soon the bear was no more than half a city block away. Tim cut the motor and we drifted quietly as the bear ambled over the boulders, his coat shimmering in the sun.

I’ve seen grizzlies, lions and elephants up close, but there was something special about seeing that polar bear. I was dazzled by this massive creature’s status in the natural world. In its mastery of the freezing and frozen waters of the north, it taunts lesser animals as slackers. And this one put on quite a show for us, lingering in view as it made its way up the rocky incline.

So by lunch on our third day, we had had intimate encounters with belugas, walruses and a polar bear. In wildlife terms, the trip was already a roaring success. All we needed were a few more kinds of whale and some interesting birds in addition to the tiny sanderling that had hitched a ride out to sea in Churchill and stayed on board for a couple of days.

After lunch, we landed on uninhabited Coates Island for the first of many tundra walks. Because this was to be a landing and not just a look-see, the first Zodiac included a staffer with a rifle, loaded for bear. While Marine Expeditions is fully committed to preserving the ecology of the places it visits, that commitment stops short of standing idly by as one of its passengers gets eaten.

Larry and I had seen tundra before, but always from park trails designed to keep visitors off the delicate mosses and lichens that carpet the ground. So what a revelation it was to set foot for the first time on the spongy, resilient soil of Coates Island. You have the extraordinary sensation that the earth is talking back to you as you walk on it. Maybe it’s saying “Get off!” since the short Arctic summer gives the tiny, ground-hugging plants so little time to grow.

By the time we got to the little Baffin Island town of Lake Harbour, or Kimmirut, where the Inuit community--and especially the children--gave us a red-carpet welcome, it had been six days since we’d seen anyone who wasn’t a fellow traveler on the Akademik Ioffe. We hadn’t passed another ship or even spotted a hunting cabin. We could have been the last people on Earth. On a trip like this, the ship is more than a floating hotel; it becomes a lifeline, a cocoon. You feel protected by it, but also immensely vulnerable.

Our insular little universe revolved around mealtimes. Breakfast was a buffet of a hot main dish such as eggs or pancakes, with toast, hot cereal, cold cereal, fruit, yogurt and juices. It was the only meal everyone agreed was good. Lunches and dinners provided an endless source of conversation as our table mates either complained bitterly or raved contentedly about the food on board.

I found it acceptable but dismayingly inconsistent, and you could never tell if the meat, fish or vegetarian main dish was the way to go. The main course was accompanied by an appetizer, a salad and a dessert, all dished out by the hard-working and good-humored Russian waitresses, who seemed to know just enough English to bring you what you wanted. As advertised, it wasn’t fancy fare. When the weather was good, there was sunset, around 9:30 p.m. and unfailingly spectacular; drinkers could adjourn to the late-night lounge, and the hardy to the sauna and sea-temperature plunge pool; the bridge players and Scrabble players found one another, and there were nightly movies on the big-screen TV in the lounge.

The bar was chronically short of ice. So once we got into iceberg territory, the Zodiac drivers were on constant lookout for “bergy bits,” which they hauled on board for Jen Whittle, who tended both the bar and the shipboard shop.

If the early explorers Rob was lecturing about were eager to see landfall, the current explorers were awaiting icefall. The first ice thrill came on the Zodiac ride to Edgell Island, when we passed bright blue bergs whose sculpted hollows turned them into floating Henry Moore sculptures. But we earned the towering icebergs of Greenland the old-fashioned way: with an arduous crossing of the Davis Strait, whose gale-force winds and high swells forced the captain to close the decks to passengers. Even those of us who weren’t seasick were reluctant to move around with all that pitching and rolling. As we got closer, the winds died down, and icebergs soon popped out all over--long low ones looking like fingers on the sea, tall rounded ones looking like giant mounds of whipped cream, little chunky ones that would end up in our drinks.

Before landing in Ilulissat, we took a Zodiac cruise of the Ice Garden, a fog-draped maze of looming, massive, rough-hewn icebergs newly ejected from the Ilulissat Glacier. The weather was raw, but no one was complaining. We had come for the Arctic. We had seen our polar bear. We were close enough to touch an iceberg. We were about to take a walk in Greenland’s fourth-largest town. And tea and cookies, and all the comforts of home, would be waiting when we got back to our ship.

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GUIDEBOOK

In Northern Waters

Arctic cruises: This summer the Akademik Ioffe will cruise between Greenland and Churchill, Canada, from July 13 to July 25. Prices per person, double occupancy, begin at $2,345 for a cabin without private bath, $2,995 with semiprivate bath. The comfy cabin with private bath that we had goes for $3,695 to $3,995, and suites cost $4,295 to $4,795. Prices include round-trip air fare from Ottawa to the port. Taxes and port fees add $395 per person.

Other North Atlantic trips include “The Northwest Passage,” 11 days for $1,945 to $4,795 per person; “The Best of Baffin,” 10 days for $1,945 to $3,995 per person; and, in the same price range, “Arctic Wildlife.”

For more information: Contact Marine Expeditions, 30 Hazelton Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 2E2; telephone (800) 263-9147.