Travels and Musings: Sunday, August 13- Day Trip to Greenland

This is my favorite picture from the whole trip. The village of Kulusuk is in the background.

The day did not start off well. I called the taxi company and they said one would be there soon. After about 15 minutes of waiting out in cold, cloudy, damp conditions I called them. Oh- my cab had picked up someone else. Sorry. They’d send another driver. Ten minutes later I was wondering if I should just start walking (this was the small domestic airport, only 2.8 km) and my driver called. The dispatcher had given her the wrong street, due either to my faulty pronunciation of the street (Brekkustigur) or to the dispatcher’s poor hearing. She arrived a few minutes later and cheerfully drove me to the airport, slamming on her brakes at one point when someone came down the road leading to the airport on the wrong side of the road. British, maybe? I told her that if she were a NYC cab driver she would have leaned on her horn and shouted nasty words at the other driver.

The security line.

The plane. Looks like my hand got in the way!

(Fast forward to my arrival back at RKV: I chose to walk it and arrived at my apartment 35 minutes after landing. Good decision.)

A picture from the IcelandAir lounge showing debarkation from a commercial flight pre-1946. There was no airport so seaplanes were used.

In the waiting area I met a group of 5 people heading off to a ship in Kulusuk from which they’d go kayaking every day. They’d brought dry suits and spray skirts. The accommodations sounded like something I saw the day before in the mockup of the crew cabin of a fishing trawler at the Maritime Museum. No, thanks.

Approaching Kulusuk.

I took this shot on the return to Iceland; I noticed the proliferation of algae and wondered if it could be due to fertilizer runoff from local farms. A local later confirmed that I was right.

Arrival at Kulusuk. They really ought to give their employees better ear protection.

The Kulusuk Airport was loaded with all kinds of pretty things for sale, including sealskins and reindeer skins. They ran around $100 each. Prominent signs in the airport noted that they had been hunted by Inuit with permission under an international treaty with careful focus on sustainability. The signs also subtly accused Greenpeace of hurting the local economy with its propaganda.

Kulusuk is actually an island with a population of about 240 (and decreasing). The residents are mostly hunters- in fact, I’d seen some dead seals by the shoreline at one point. We visited small museum, where the guide pointed out an anorak made of a combination of polar bear and dog fur. When the dogs are too old to work or die from other causes, he said, they put the fur to good use.

We did a lot of walking, up and down scenic hills, into town and even down a glacier at one point. I had had a light breakfast, there was nothing but empty calories (candy and chips) available at either airport and no food on the flight. I was relieved when we stopped at a grocery store, but supplies there were quite limited. Happily, I found a can of tuna with a pop-top lid (imported from Thailand!) and a loaf of crusty bread, and improvised a sandwich. It cost me 53 Danish Kroner (Greenland is a Danish territory). I didn’t care what the exchange rate was- I was hungry. Turns out my lunch cost about $8.50- well worth it!

Inside of the Lutheran church. The ship model was built by sailors who had been shipwrecked off the coast; they spent the winter there and built the model of their ship. The prayer books were in the Inuit language.

This pipe contains electrical lines. They can't be put overhead because they'd be blown down and they can't be buried underground because it's too hard to dig into the rocky surface.

We were offered the chance to go back to the airport by water- for another $40, most of which went to the hunters who would use their boats. They didn’t have to twist my arm. They drove slowly (8 knots/hour) so we could take in the sights and admire the icebergs, and we arrived in plenty of time to make the flight home.