Qaqortoq, Greenland

We haven’t been lost at sea for all of those wondering where we have been and what we’ve been up to for the past 4 days. After not being able to sail into Iceland we were all kind of bummed by missing that port too. I guess the Captain tried to make it up to us by cruising through the Greenland fjords and ice pack on Friday.


We were really looking forward to going to Greenland again, the largest island in the world that isn’t a continent. We entered into one of the many Greenland fjords around noon on Friday. Though there was fog near the banks we could see the stark mountainous terrain in the distance. Soon we were spotting icebergs and whales and an occasional seal resting on an iceberg.

We approached a small village and with permission from the village harbor master our ship anchored and dropped a tender to let the photo staff off the ship to take close up pictures of a very large iceberg. They also got a huge chunk of an iceberg to bring back on the ship where it has been on display since Friday afternoon. Of course we must purchase the $40 DVD that has this spectacular video on it. Nothing is free on this ship including hot chocolate!

We sailed into Qaqortoq (cockatock?) Greenland early Saturday morning where we dropped anchors in the harbor of this very small but colorful village. We then tendered into the village –about a 5-10 minute ride. Once there we inundated this village of 3500 residents with another 3000 of us. The crew wasn’t even allowed to disembark since they thought it would add more people to this tiny village.

How does it feel to walk on one of the most desolated islands in the world? It was very weird to say the least. The Greenlanders were very friendly and most helpful. They wanted to make our visit memorable no matter how little they had. The one true souvenir shop was doing non-stop business from 8AM until 4PM. There were a few individual people selling their wares and they all had money conversion charts with them. They were prepared to take our US dollars (they use the Danish kroner) and hopefully we helped out their economy.

Since Greenland is covered in ice most of the year they produce very little of their own goods. They are dependant on the country of Denmark to supplement the people with an allowance every year (about $11,500 per person) but they are self governing. Most of the people are of Danish descent or Inuit descent or a combination of the two.

It was actually a very surreal experience to walk on the land of this country that almost no one goes or travels to. It was amazing to see the locals out and about; their children playing free & their dogs and cats walking around with not a care in the world. They are a beautiful people with their Inuit heritage and very glad to have some visitors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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