WHAT. A. DAY. (So this will likely be a long post.). Noteworthy is that we saw zero Northern Lights overnight. It was cloudy when we turned in, there were a few visible stars around midnight, and the Big Dipper was visible around 5 am. A couple travel mates were up at 2 am and were lucky enough to have seen the lights.
The day started with a walking tour of the town. A few items to note first…..
- the start of the day is still in the dark (the sun doesn’t rise until after 10 am),
- “town” while “all down hill” is a L O N G walk away,
- the day started out around -10 Celsius, but did eventually warm up to around -5,
- we’re next to water and thus the streets are all generally icy,
- we’re next to water and every wooden sidewalk/walkway/handrail is generally icy.
Here is one of the early pictures (while still dark) of an example of a local “garage”. In Denmark, these would be where folks store their bikes. Here in Greenland, it is generally used to store your sled (as in dog sled).
(If you are familiar with cameras, here is where Tim really bumped up his exposure compensation, so the photos wouldn’t look like they were taken in the dark. Of course that makes lights such as street lights really glow.)
So we walked from our hotel all throughout the town to see a few notable sites (if you aren’t getting the hint yet, we’re going to do a L O T of walking today. After getting to the harbor bridge (which separates the dam from the harbor – the damn is of a fresh water lake, that supplies the town with its drinking water), we took several flights of wooden stairs down to the harbor. A bit nerve wracking considering the points made above….
At the harbor, quite a few of the fisherman were prepping their boats for the days work (yes, on Saturday) with a few heading out as we walked by. It was quite odd to hear the crunching sound (like a car driving on loose gravel) as the boats broke their way through the light ice covering the water as they made their way out of the harbor. (In the picture above you can see the broken ice trail from a boat.)
The photo below shows a fisherman trying to break his boat out without hitting the large ice mass, or any of the boats behind him. It was pretty masterful to watch.
This was the original factory (shrimp processor I believe they said) in the harbor, although a new factory on the other side of the harbor has been constructed which is a big competitor.
Here are a few more shots through-out the town to give you a flavor for it…
A fun stop was a small workshop where Tupilaq are made. These are carvings traditionally “avenging monsters” made from animal parts, such as bone, hair, antlers, etc.. It is now an impressive handicraft using bones, antlers, or whale tusks to make intricate carvings, not just Greenlandic monsters. The shop was small, nearly a challenge to get our group of 11 inside, and two of the crafters were there. Each craftsman has his own display case, so he must be present in order to sell his wares.
We found one we wanted, but the carver wasn’t there, so we settled for this one. And the carver was a HAM!
We continued our walk through town, checking out the Ilulissat way of life. The streets are steep, they were icy today, and you can drive nearly anything down the street – a car, a bus, a front loader with snow chains, an ATV… you get the idea (yes, we saw all of these this morning). We did run across this:
And think we might have found where Santa lives… We hadn’t note earlier, but we are 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Maybe we shouldn’t have had reindeer the other night… Anyway, we continued to walk across and around town.
We found a unique (old) stone and sod type building, with a unique entryway – whale jaw bones. To give scale to the jawbones, Jay volunteered to show case the entry.
We next stopped at a picturesque brown church close to the bay that, if you’ve seen pics of Ilulissat you’ve seen this church. Beautiful views of Disko Bay and all the ice bergs floating about. This was near the home of Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, an expedition pioneer.
We continued on, walking on a long walkway, past the building they keep coffins and other dead bodies in that they are unable to bury. (During the winter the ground gets so frozen they are unable to dig graves, and while they do estimate how many people may die any given year, so they can dig all of the graves needed during the summer, sometimes they are off. This is when they must store the body until they can bury it.)
And in case you missed the detail, we noticed something odd… They double barred the door FROM THE OUTSIDE, as if to keep something within. We didn’t ask, we just walked a whole lot faster, just say’n…
Continuing on up the cliff, errr hillside, we continued to walk across some more of the town:
After a quick stop at the modern looking building above (to the left of the blue building) for a bathroom break, we headed back down into town to the outfitters for our next event, a boat ride out to the icebergs. After arriving outside the outfitters building we waited for the bus. But the bus didn’t arrive. So we waited some more. After watching the bus (at least it looked like the bus we were waiting for) drive by a couple of times, our guide called someone in Copenhagen to find out where our bus was (they were closed but he “knew a guy”….thankfully!). And we continued to wait. After several phone calls, the bus arrived to take us to the harbor (evidently they thought they needed to pick us up from the hotel, not in town).
At the harbor we met Michael, who was our guide on the boat. He was a native of Ilulissat, traveled between Denmark & Ilulissat for 6 years while studying to become a woodworker, and was extremely knowledgeable about everything in and around Ilulissat. One interesting fact he gave us is this – their language is a “descriptive language”, meaning they don’t have a word for many things but rather they describe objects. We use the word “school” but they have a reallllly long word that literally translates to “the building where you go to read”. The word “spoon” translates to “something you lick”. It was comical though, because the single words he threw out sounded like half a sentence all run together!
Anyway, out in the water Michael and the captain did a fantastic job of meandering us through the icebergs. Small icebergs, massive icebergs, various shaped icebergs and, much like snowflakes, no two were the same. We didn’t get to see any calving, per se, but a few people on the boat heard a crack and Michael pointed out “activity” based on the sudden waves coming from that direction. Dang! We would have loved to have seen that!
Here’s some pics from the boat:
But what we did see however was unexpected. And fantastic. And amazing. And….okay, we’ll just tell you what it was. It was a humpback whale!!!! We noticed it’s blow but didn’t realize it was resting at the surface, which is normal for humpback whales. We watched for a few minutes, barely seeing the dark spot where it was above the surface, but continually seeing the blow. And then…. Holy cow….. it surfaced, curling around and then diving down!!!! Not a lot to photograph, but here’s what we have:
We headed away, moving around another iceberg and then the captain slowly went back into the ‘cove’ area where we saw the humpback. And he was back again! We had the awestruck opportunity to see a humpback surface and dive twice within about a 15 minute span. Truly unexpected, and truly freaking awesome.
After the boat ride, we headed to the Ilulissat Icefjord center. We heard about the icefjord but it isn’t possible to boat to/through it. It stretches 70 km to an inland glacier and is impassable, not to mention incredibly dangerous. The center was really cool, giving science-y facts about ice and the ice fjord. After visiting the center, we sat for a beverage in the cafe thinking we were finished. But we weren’t!
The next part was a bit daunting and dicey at times due to the icy conditions on wooden walkways. We first walked up onto the station’s roof, getting a great view of the area. We then came down off the back of the roof, walking behind the center, and headed down a boardwalk trail heading for an ancient settlement area known as Sermermiut.
What we missed, or didn’t understand, is that we were walking TO the icefjord as well. Again, the walk was a little dicey – an elevated wooden walkway, covered with frost, and with no handrails. At the end we had to crawl up smooth, slick rocks but OH.EM.GEE. The icefjord!!!! Stunning!!! We saw such a small piece of it but it was amazing. As stressful as the round trip hike was, it was absolutely worth it. Here are the pics from that portion of the walk.
Due to the danger of the dogs to residents (kids), sled dog teams aren’t allowed within the town, but must be kept on the outskirts of town. One such area is next to the Ice Center, so as we walked back into town, we walked by the sled dog areas (more on this Monday), listening to the howls of the dogs. There were 3 young pups that were somehow loose, that were looking to folks for attention (well probably food) as well.
Anyway, we had dinner reservations at a rooftop restaurant in a hotel in town, as the restaurant overlooks Disko Bay and we would be seated around sunset. We were extremely early so we walked from the icefjord center into town. At the edge of town, it was determined we were still too early, so we walked through the grocery store. Do you need ground musk ox? They’ve got it! Do you need reindeer summer sausage? They’ve got it!
Once everyone’s shopping was done (some bought candy, some bought reindeer sausage) we decided to head to the hotel. The view did not disappoint!
The only disappointment were the clouds low on the horizon that were threatening to block the Northern Lights tonight.
Our guide asked if we wanted to walk back to the hotel or get a taxi. When asked how far it was his reply was “it’s half an hour and all uphill”. Oh yeah, we’d been out and about for so long we forgot about that awful uphill walk. A quick taxi ride and we were safely back at the hotel. We hope to set alarms and check for the NL’s a couple of times during the night, so we hope to have pics to share (no guarantees though…nobody controls Mother Nature!).
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