Icecap

Spending four hours in an airport is fairly common when you travel. However, I cannot recall ever being the only person in the whole airport passenger area before. Evidently I should have received an SMS that the plane was delayed for two hours, but that didn't happen. The only people who were here for the first hour were in the staff area and came out occasionally - for instance when I checked in, or to check on the landing strip. Then a couple of Chinese showed up. They thought they had booked a sightseeing flight, but no one turned up to take them. Then they went. No shops are open. Someone started to clear the roof. There is supposed to be at least one plane per hour, but none arrived or departed for three hours. Then three people arrived - obviously waiting for someone, as the plane arrived soon after. Thirty six people got off the plane, and I was still the only person waiting in the passenger area.

Then they wheeled the plane into storage. Another plane came half an hour later. Another thirty-six people got off. Then half an hour before we were leaving, the rest of the passengers arrived. I had been told two hours before takeoff!

We went to Kanglussiat, and then to Nuuk.

The first three pictures are from the guesthouse, the next are of the Icefjord (the seventy kilometres of icebergs), there is icecap, and a shot to show how far from the coast we were. Also a big river.

So now I leave Greenland tomorrow morning. This is the very last Greenland post.

Snow

This morning icebergs filled the bay in front of the town. A ship was tried to come in, but couldn't find any way, so it eventually turned around and sailed away. It snowed overnight. Most cars have their winter tyres on, even though you can't have them on before 1st October. The seasons really change quickly here.

I went on the guided blue trail walk today, but because of the snow and ice it would have been dangerous to do the tricky parts, so we only did a subsection. The guide showed us where the Inuit ruins are (they are marked with sticks sticking up in the snow). Later in the walk we came across Inuit grave sites (lots of stones, as they put stones around and over the corpse). One of the graves had its cover removed and you could see parts of the skeleton. 

It was really amazing to walk some of the same area as I did yesterday and see the difference that just one day had made. I photographed one of the ponds from yesterday, and the bay where the Inuit settlement was. So even though it wasn't as long as I was expecting, it was really great to do! The other person on the tour was a mad selfie-taking Malaysian. Every picture had him in it. 

Ice

I met the South Korean lady again today. She is going to Kangalussuaq tomorrow for seven days, during which she will do 30 tours.

Like in Alaska, the dogs here have shorter coats than they do in Australia. There are about the same number of dogs as people in this town, and there are large areas where the dogs are chained. Every dog must be chained in a designated area of the town once they are six months old. During the winter there are a lot of dog sleds, but not now as there is no snow cover yet.

Winter is definitely coming. I went past the Inuit site, and there is no way you could see it from the same boat trip I did two days ago. All the water behind the first lot of icebergs is frozen to some degree. The water in ponds is interesting as it must be seeping out after the ice crust has formed. The waterfalls are frozen. And ponds with plants in are different - maybe there are bubbles from the plants.

The walk I went on ended with a lot of steps and the only city sculpture I have seen here.

Kurt Rasmussen

Today was rather windy, so the boat didn't sail to Disko Island. Instead, I have extra time here. I went to the museum (only open from noon), which I wouldn't have seen otherwise. It is in the house were Kurt Rasmussen was born, and learnt skills from the Inuits that he used in his career. It has a great display on Arctic Explorers, on Inuit settlement and the significance of the archeological excavation of the one here (it showed that there had been multiple migrations and that they dated back 4000 years), and local history. It has an Inuit turf house that was built by the old men who had done it before people stopped building them.

I also saw several examples of Inuit "embroidery" - which is really an inlay weaving technique. I have seen several other items with this work, but none could be photographed, and they are very fine!

I went to an Inuit myths and life tour, which took place in a turf cottage. They gave us musk ox, whale, halibut and salmon to taste, and made Greenlandic coffee - a potent combination which ends in adding burning gin to the mix.

Icebergs

You do know that you will always meet someone who is outdoing you. So far, this trip, that really hasn't happened, and everyone has been amazed at what I am doing. But it had to happen sometime, and today was it. There was this South Korean lady on our iceberg cruise. She did the cruise yesterday as well. She wanted to know what I was doing tomorrow. When she understood, she decided she would go to Disko island as well - despite it being an eight hour journey each way. When I asked how long she was in Greenland, she didn't know - her trip had already been 105 days, and she had been to France, Ireland, Iceland and Greenland. Iceland was good because there was something to do every night. I found out she had been on every tour on offer in ilulissat, and she had four more days. I might see her on the boat tomorrow.

There have been three different Inuit people's settle in the same site on this peninsula, so it is a particularly important prehistoric site. The area where the icebergs calve is also geographically significant, so it has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This morning I visited the Inuit site. It had snowed, so I'm sure I was the first to do so. It's definitely a pretty place.

Later, I went on the iceberg cruise. The glacier sends more icebergs than any other glacier in the world. Where they break off is about a km deep, but the mouth of the fjord is only 250m deep, so the icebergs all stop at the mouth until they have lost enough depth to go on. As they move down the fjord they also turn over, so they get smooth tops, and acquire dirty from the bottom of the fjord. Every large iceberg in the photos has more than 250m below the waterline, and roughly 50m above it. They were much taller, but in 2004, they became shorter. I saw the Inuit site from the sea, and the place where I'm staying.

The boat can only go where there is water between or in front of the icebergs, where they meet the bay, so you miss out on seeing the entire fjord where they are all jammed together after calving from the glacier. There is a walk beside the icebergs in the fjord before they reach the bay. To get to the icebergs you go across the tundra, and through a chasm. When I got back, I tried to walk to the icebergs, but I ran out of time to get there.