Greenland

We are spending several days around Disko Island, the largest island off the Greenland coast, and Disko Bay.  This is a barren land that is surprisingly beautiful, and the sea is full of icebergs, fish, and whales.  One day the crew was fishing off the back of the ship, catching fish as fast as they threw in the lines.  That turned into lunch the next day.

The view from my cabin

One afternoon we visited the abandoned settlement of Qullissat.  Hardly a native village, Qullissat was founded in 1924 to house the workers in a local coal mine.  When the mine was closed in 1972, the town was mostly abandoned, and many of the houses are falling apart.  But we were warned not to go into any of the houses as they are still owned by “someone,” and it was clear that “someone” was maintaining some of the houses.

As we see abandoned and modern settlements, I keep asking, why?  Why would anyone live here?  How can you live here?  The land is rocky and nearly barren, there is no growing season to speak of, nor any domesticated animals.  When the sun sets one day in mid-October, it does not come up again until March.

One day they took us to Mars - a particularly rocky and barren area.  They claimed that NASA practiced with the Mars Rover here, and I believe it.  Past the rocky part, the ground feels spongy as we are walking on trees that spread out sideways and are no more than a few inches tall.  And the amazing thing is … even tiny trees change colors in the fall.

Finally we reached the part of Greenland where we might see polar bears.  All of the passengers are excited at the prospect, but we now have two guides with each hiking group - one in the lead and one in back - each with a rifle, and we have been sternly warned to stay in our groups.  So far, however, no polar bear sightings.

Meanwhile, icebergs float peacefully all around us.  One morning we had to change our landing beach because there was a large iceberg near the scheduled beach, and the captain was concerned that it might break up while we were ashore, causing large waves in our landing area.  This beach looks like it could be in Hawaii but … the iceberg that landed on it does not melt.

We have become adept at wet landings.  We wear our parkas, waterproof pants, and boots with warm layers underneath.  The zodiacs take us to a beach, and we swing our legs over the side and into the water. Voila.

Today we visited the town of Kullorsuaq.  This turned out to be a fascinating outing.  The houses are scattered on the hillside.  There are no cars, but a lot of boats and snowmobiles.  The houses have electricity and some kind of gas heating - something like a potbelly stove, I think - but no running water or sewage.  Water is distributed in four locations in the village, and people walk there to fill plastic bottles.  Sounds a lot like Africa to me.  I saw one woman pushing a wheelbarrow with four large plastic bottles to the filling station and then back to her house.  Sewage is collected by truck or tractor in large yellow bags and then put in the town dump on the outskirts.  Since the houses do not have running water, there is a central building that contains washing machines, bathrooms, and showers.

Someone's dinner tonight?

We were treated to a (dry land) kayak exhibition in the town square, led by a man dressed in polar bear pants.  He spoke Greenlandic, a local woman translated into unintelligible English, one of our guides translated into English and then French, and one last guide translated into Mandarin.  The translations took far longer than the demonstration.

Kullorsuaq has about 400 residents but no dock, so we did a wet landing.  Supposedly, the local people are fishermen, but I did not see anything that looked commercial or big.  What supports this village? 

In the afternoon, the entire village - men, women, and children - came to our ship on the zodiacs. There were more exhibitions and a musical show. Mostly, the children hit the bar for cans of Coca Cola, and went swimming in our unused (by us) swimming pool.

Our youngest visitor

We are close to the farthest north that we will reach, so the sea was full of large icebergs.  As a dense fog rolled in, I wondered if modern radar can spot icebergs.  I really hope so. Whoops, change in plans ... again. We sailed north all evening, but there was a medical emergency on board, so we had to turn around and go back to the larger town we passed before Kullorsuaq to drop off the passenger. There was an airport there? A hospital? This is not a good place to have a medical emergency. From there, we spent the next day sailing south and will arrive in Canada tomorrow.

The view of our ship from Kullorsuaq