Nuuk to Narsarsuaq

Unfortunately, the weather turned during my second night asleep on the ferry, and when I woke up on the second full day on the boat, excited for our stop in the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk, it was drizzling a chilly rain and looking mighty gloomy out. 

I got up and walked the 20 minutes from the ferry dock to the old colonial part of town (which is what the guide told me to go see in the time we had) all the same, though I can't say it was my favorite part of the journey. It doesn't look so gross out in these couple decent pictures I got, but it was pretty gross out. Also, it was early in the morning, before most things were open, so the town had a forlorn, empty feeling to it. Which is funny, because Nuuk is by far Greenland's most populous city, with about 17,000 residents. (There are only about 55,000 Greenlanders TOTAL on the whole island.) In a way it's all fine because (1) the weather is gloomy and drizzly a lot of the time in Greenland, so I was getting a true local experience, and (2) from what I've heard Nuuk isn't the most stunning part of the island anyway. And I'm grateful I got at least a couple of hours there.

As I struggled to focus on the fact that this is just what Greenland is like and it's part of the experience, it stayed rainy and clouded over for the better part of two days. At several stops, it didn't even seem worth it to get off the boat, because there was nothing to see but mist and nothing to get but soggy. By the time we got to Qaqortoq, though, I was very antsy. And I'd been told by another tourist that Qaqortoq was her favorite town in Greenland. So I was going to explore no matter what. This ended up being lots of stops in many of Qaqortoq's absurd number of grocery and convenience stores per capita to dodge the raindrops, and spending more time than I might have otherwise marveling at how an entire wall of yarn....

...would be adjacent to an entire wall of rifles.

I think this tells you a lot about Greenlandic life.

I was also mightily impressed at how even these towns that it feels like Time forgot somehow have decent little sections of bright produce that must have come from so, so far away.

Qaqortoq has a collection of sculptures throughout town that add some artistic flair:

But as always, my favorite thing is just to wander and keep an eye out for a particularly pretty view or moment, a break in the clouds.

During this time of gross weather, the water was also more choppy, which meant that I was self-medicating with Dramamine, which I soon realized KNOCKS me OUT. Meaning I was whiling away hours at a time like the Greenlanders, dead asleep in my bunk in the middle of the day. (Though I stayed more dressed than those guys next door did.) So at the end of my ferry ride, when we reached its southernmost stop of Narsaq, it felt like it was probably good that the sea voyage was over. I could see myself just descending into a Dramamine-induced permanent haze and riding endlessly up and down the coast of Greenland, never to be heard from again.

Instead, I dragged my luggage ashore through the rain and the mist and turned to bid a fond adieu to the ship...

...slept off the rest of the Dramamine in a guesthouse bed in Narsaq, and the next morning (unable to find anyone to take my money for the stay and having to leave some cash on the counter of the reception desk folded into a piece of paper with my name and room keys...which is what I felt a Greenlander would probably do under the circumstances, so I hope it was okay) caught one last, hour-long boat from Narsaq an hour through the fjords (and past some shockingly blue ice bergs)...

...to the town of Narsarsuaq, which has an airport which has one flight per week to Copenhagen. But before getting on that plane, I spent my last few hours wandering Narsarsuaq taking way too many photos of all the impossibly picturesque sights in every direction.

When the plane took off, I was sad to be leaving Greenland, for sure. The whole experience there still kind of feels like a dream. One I'm grateful for. The sweet, mellow people, the weird coziness of being a small amount of humanity set against that epic landscape, and so much of the island I'd still like to see...Hopefully someday I'll be back.

In the meantime: let's visit Copenhagen, shall we?

Ilulissat to Nuuk

After seeing as much of Ilulissat as I could in the time I had there, I boarded the Arctic Umiaq line ferry that travels the southwest coast of Greenland...

...and settled into my couchette bunk (the bottom left) for a 3 night, 3.5 day ferry voyage. There were some other tourists on the boat; they were generally very insular, mostly retirees, and all European. Most people on the boat were Greenlandic, traveling to see family or for work or studying. I shared my little bunk area with a Greenlandic grandmother and her two grandkids, and then there was a second group of four bunks (populated by an ever-changing--from port to port--group of random men who always seemed to be napping) with which we shared a little bathroom.

What I gleaned of the Greenlandic people during this half-week of intimately sharing space with them: they are generally quiet, respectful, self-contained people who are not effusive but are at root extremely friendly, trusting, and trustworthy. I had little choice but to leave all of my things on or around my bunk while I roamed the ship and even got off the ship at each port, and nothing went missing. By the end of the trip I was pretty lackadaisical about my things, just knowing they were safe with strangers here. The kids were allowed to run a bit wild, but that was actually kind of good to see, considering how mellow and controlled the adults seem to be. And everyone, young and old, runs fast and loose with the bedtimes, often staying up until the wee hours and then sleeping a good part of the day if they feel like it. Also: be advised that Greenlandic men, regardless of pot-belly size, are not shy about falling asleep on top of their bedsheets wearing only very skimpy underwear, regardless of who might walk by or how surprised she may be to see such a sight in a place where people are generally covered from head to toe against the weather year-round.

So anyway: we left Ilulissat on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, heading out past the massive icebergs once again. Sorry, but I just have to share another picture and a video...they're just so amazing.

And then, two or three times per day, we would pull up to a dock that usually looked a lot like this:

People would be crying and hugging and laughing and waving and reuniting and it was all very sweet. We would stay anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours, and we were welcome to get off the boat and explore the towns we stopped in. One that I was particularly excited to see was Sisimiut, which I'd heard is a particularly pretty place.

At the craft workshop, there was this one old man with very few teeth who had learned to say in English: "Danish Kroner. No card. Money, money, money!" He must have repeated it a dozen times in the five minutes I was in there and it sounded funnier and funnier to me each time.

Many of the towns we stopped in had these sets of whale jawbones, which bring good luck if you walk through them. I did.

And there were often really picturesque examples of traditional sod houses versus Danish colonial-style houses. The ship even had an on-board guide who would sometimes get off the boat and take us on a walking tour and tell us a bit about the towns we were stopping in. It was interesting to me how much our (Greenlandic) guide focused on the colonial history of Greenland rather than the long pre-European human occupancy. I'm not sure what that was about, but I was definitely left wanting more balanced information about the history of native Greenlanders and then the interactions between Greenlanders and then Europeans, when they arrived.

It wasn't so hard, though, to let this go and just focus on wandering and enjoying the great beauty of this coastline and the places we stopped. (Here: still Sisimiut.)

Whenever the breeze died down the mosquitoes emerged in FORCE. I kept trying to take a picture of the huge swarms of them. You can kind of see them as little specks of light in this shot.

There were also a few towns that the ferry officially stops at that don't have a harbor big enough for it, so instead we lowered a skiff and they transported passengers to and from the ferry that way while the rest of us looked on from the ship's decks. This is the picturesque town of Kangaamiut, where the skiff had to make three round-trips to bring aboard all the new passengers.

Past Kangaamiut, en route to Maniitsoq, we got to weave among the rocky shoreline a bit more, which was BEAUTIFUL.

And I particularly loved our passage into Hamborgsund, where we could see glacial tongues reaching down toward the ocean from among still-craggy peaks.

And just when I would feel like we were on the outer edges of the world, far, FAR from the things of man, another cluster of brightly-painted houses would appear, perched on the rocks. Just amazing that people live entire lives in such remote, isolated, tiny towns like this (Maniitsoq).

Okay, that covers the first half of the ferry trip. I'll save the second half for the next post.

Ilulissat

I'm going to struggle not to post so many pictures here that I break the blog.

Plans kind of kept dissolving and resolving as I was headed to Ilulissat in a way that left me with little choice but to just surrender to the spirit of travel and faith in the general goodness of other people. Air Greenland (which I've heard the locals refer to in Greenlandic as "Maybe Air," which tells you something) bumped me from my flight...I rebooked it for the next day...the Couchsurfing host I had lined up got stranded in another part of the island and canceled on me...I called someone he referred me to book a room with instead, and that guy spoke limited English and told me he'd pick me up at the airport in a manner that left me with quite a bit of doubt, especially since all he told me is that he'd be wearing a black jacket...

But my blind faith paid off in this case, as my shortened time in Ilulissat packed a big punch.

The guy in the black jacket was indeed at the airport, and his name is Bent, and I had a comfy night in a room of the rental apartment he keeps as a side business. As he dropped me off, he told me he was going seal hunting that afternoon after the rain stopped, if I wanted to come. Which I did. So when the rain dutifully stopped (and the weather turned totally brilliant for the rest of my time in town), we went down to the harbor to his boat. There were SO MANY BOATS. I asked him if everyone in town has a boat and he said, "No, everyone in town has two or three boats."

And off we went, seal-hunting.

Except with a twist, because Ilulissat is a huge tourist destination in Greenland due to the UNESCO World Heritage site status of adjacent Disko Bay, which is the terminus of a huge glacier that calves to such an extreme extent that the Bay is nearly always completely filled with freaking enormous icebergs. Which then float out into the waters all around town. And beyond. (I remember when I was in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2013 and there were a few spots where you could see ice bergs, I was told they'd originated in Greenland. I'm pretty sure this is the EXACT PLACE.) So there we were, seal hunting...among these spectacular ice bergs.

We were out on the water for about three hours and unfortunately only spotted one seal, which Bent's friends in another boat sped toward with great excitement, rifles at the ready...but it got away. There was also radio chatter about a whale being spotted that a bunch of the hunters out on the water seemed to be trying to cooperate to locate and maybe hunt, but that fizzled out too.

Still, it was a fascinating, gorgeous experience. And back at the dock after, I saw evidence that others had had a more successful seal-hunting afternoon.

Bent made me an amazing dinner of locally caught halibut...

...and then first thing in the morning, my Ilulissat experience continued, solo. I was appreciating the impossibly picturesque setting:

Even the graveyards here are gorgeous.

But the real jaw-dropping part happened when I followed the Sermermiut hiking trail into the UNESCO zone to see Disko Bay itself. The walk was gorgeous...

...and the berg-filled bay was of a scope and drama that I just could not get a picture of, much as I tried. I sat there for a half-hour, just looking at the amazing landscape (with its frigid breezes blowing over me), listening to the thunder-clap and echoing sounds of ice calving (and saw part of a big berg collapse), and even heard the occasional sound of a whale coming up for air, though I never managed to spot it. Breathtaking.

When I got too chilly to sit there anymore, I headed back into town.

One of the other constant sounds here is sled dogs yipping. They're EVERYWHERE and they can really make a ruckus when they get each other going.

On a local's tip, I headed down to the old church at the waterfront...

...and with a growing group of people waited outside...

...until a group of teenagers who had been confirmed that morning came out in their traditional dress to be greeted and congratulated by the community.

I mean, really.

Okay, that was 18 pictures, so I have to stop now.

From here, I am boarding a ferry that will take me for a three-day ride down the coast to the south of Greenland. So more adventures await, and I will see you back here soon!

Back to Kangerlussuaq

Right as planned on Thursday, a Herc appeared in the skies above Summit Station, landed (in probably the worst weather we had the whole time I was there, which was still pretty decent weather), and most of our construction crew gave everyone else hugs goodbye and got on that plane.

When the cargo doors opened again a couple of hours later, it was a very different scene outside.

It felt disorienting but great to be back in Kangerlussuaq, the birds chirping, the breeze balmy, the landscape still epic, and the mosquitoes fierce.

We were a rag-tag crew, most heading to the grocery store for beer and cigarettes (not me, Grandma!) and not even making it back to our lodging before stopping to indulge. And like Wisconsinites who switch to shorts at the first sign of spring, the temps in the 50's and 60's felt so warm to us after Summit that you'd think we'd landed in Florida.

But we were still in Greenland, and there were the musk ox hides curing in the sun to prove it.

There were also some sweet Ice friends in town, like me working up north while Antarctica is hunkered down into winter. I was inconsistent with the pictures, but it was so wonderful to catch up with familiar faces.

I took a single sip of "Greenlandic coffee" (a concoction of booze with just a touch of coffee, topped by whipped cream) and that was enough for me.

And though most of my time in Kanger was spent lazing about, I did get to take a walk down to the river to watch it rushing under the bridge in a much more frantic fashion than it had been in early May.

After two nights acclimating to relative civilization with my Summit friends, most of them were checking in their luggage for the flight back to Copenhagen and then home to the States when I said some bittersweet goodbyes and instead climbed aboard a domestic flight bound for Ilulissat...

And took off into the foggy skies above the southeastern coast of Greenland.

The view was totally obscured for the whole flight, but what I got to see when I landed was pretty spectacular. So, get ready to explore some more of this mammoth island of the north....