Morning Fjord Walk and THE END

On the morning that we left Greenland, Vicky and I took a walk.  We covered the same area as last night’s walk but weaved over and around many new places along the way.

This trip was very interesting for us. Greenland and Iceland are close, safe, and have lots to offer. These photos and views are ones that we will never forget.

This photo is one that I should label "Fall color comes to East Greenland". And you don't have to look up sixty or eighty feet in a tree to see it. It's right there under your shoes.

We went through the Kulusuk Airport three times...and we never set foot inside the airport terminal. We flew in, picked up our luggage and reboarded our helicopter without ever going inside the terminal. On this, our last flight to leave Greenland, our van pulled up on the tarmac and we got out, grabbed our luggage, and got on the plane. Great safety.

This marks our flight back from Greenland and the end of our trip. It was a great one for us and I hope you enjoyed it.

Evening Fjord Walk

On our last night in Kulusuk, we went for a walk along the fjord. We left from our hotel and walked east along the harbor and eventually reached the area near the end of the airport runway.

These walks were just simple get out and stroll and see what you can find. But walks like this provided some of my fondest memories from this trip. East Greenland can seem bleak but is actually very beautiful, colorful, and dramatic at a walking pace.

DYE-4

Our destination atop Cape Dan was DYE-4 which was a Cold War radar station operated by the US and Denmark. The Air Force negotiated an agreement with Denmark in 1958 for four Distant Early Warning sites in Greenland. This was the fourth site. The US Air Force had previously built the airport on Kulusuk and had a weather station here.

The US had about 20 people plus their families stationed here from 1958 to 1991. Families were here to try and keep the radar station guys from fraternizing with the Inuit. It didn’t work but that was the idea.

Though the military station is closed, the facility is still used by a phone company for communications.

The one big plus at DYE-4 was the views. I'm not sure how much they could see much of the year however.

The wind is so intense on Cape Dan that everything at DYE-4 had to have guy wires...and I mean everything.

Crossing Kulusuk Island

One afternoon, we drove across Kulusuk Island to its southern cape, called Cape Dan.  The southern cape is the top of a 1000 foot mountain.

Our hotel manager drove us and acted as our guide. 

This is a view of Kulusuk Village as we climbed up the mountain on our way across Kulusuk Island heading south.

We stopped along the way and as you can see, all we really had was some views, such as those in the photos above and below. Otherwise, it was a lonely stretch of road.

This is looking off the back side of Kulusuk Island. This was a view from our destination, Cape Dan.

Kulusuk Walkabout

We walked from our hotel to Kulusuk Village, toured the village and back to our hotel in about two hours. The hotel desk person was our guide. Since we were the only people left at the hotel and we were all going for a walk, she had no need to stay at the hotel. She had been here for the summer.

I said that this is a challenging place to live. We learned a lot about that on our walk around the village.  

There are only four regular motor vehicles on Kulusuk but as you can see, they do have some alternate vehicles. Most of the people that we saw, however, were walking, like here.

This was another alternate vehicle. This person picked up a tourist at the harbor and loaded their luggage into this cart for the trip to their hotel.

The best part of our walk around Kulusuk Village was when we stopped to just enjoy the views, like this one.

The village does not have running water. They do, however, have a couple of water stations where people can get water for free. You can see it flowing out. The water is piped from a lake which is behind the low rock mountain that you see just to the right of the water station and across the harbor.

This facility was right next to the water station. It is a facility for both showers and laundry. Both are free to the people who live here. We looked inside and it's about as fancy as the outside that you see here.

This store was actually in Tasiilaq but they have one in Kulusuk too. It's their general store for everything that you can buy, and I mean everything. We were told not to take photos as the store got in trouble for selling food items with past use-by dates. I didn't take any food item photos. But look at all the things you can buy - and how few of each there are, with the possible exception of guns. In this photo, guns, shovels, carpets, computers, toys, chairs, pianos, mirrors, etc. 

This is a church that was built in 1908. It was built by the Danes from a ship that ran aground in the harbor. There is a small model ship hanging inside the church by the altar.

The need for housing sometimes leads to this. Our hotel manager is rebuilding a house. Due to shipping problems, he said he would have been far better off by just ordering a Prefabricated house with everything included in a shipping container. Every single item needed can be hard to acquire.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that Kulusuk has no culture. I saw this museum up on this hill. It was closed the day that we were here, but there it is.

Once more, the views that we had when we stopped and just looked around us were really quite fantastic.

Kulusuk Village

Kulusuk is a small village of a little over 200 people. It was founded in 1909 and sits around a small harbor. It is an Inuit and Danish settlement. They also speak East Greenlandic.

This is a challenging place to live. The winds here are frequently over 60 miles per hour and it has been recorded at twice that speed. Like Tasiilaq, the winter fills the harbor with pack ice and icebergs. 

This was our first view when walking to the village from our hotel. There was a rise of land between the two locations.

This was as we got closer to the village.

The Inuit tradition is no names on graves. They believe that your name gets passed on to another so that you live on in the next generation. We did see a couple with names, which I assume are Danish graves. One is in this photo.

The harbor is really the center of Kulusuk village. We saw several hunters and fishermen come into the dock while we were near here. People came down to greet them on arrival.

There was no traffic in Kulusuk, unless you count the few local Inuit that we passed walking along the roads.

Hotel Kulusuk

Hotel Kulusuk is somewhat the center of activity on the island for tourists. The hotel is a ten minute walk from the airport and a twenty minute walk from the village of Kulusuk.

The hotel has 36 rooms and when we arrived, it was bustling with tourists from around the world. Everyone seemed to be very chatty. We met Danes, Brits, Germans, and Italians. We took a two hour walk to town and when we returned, we were the only group left in the hotel. That’s what you get on September 1st in east Greenland. 

The significance of this photo is that Kulusuk Island only has four motor vehicles. Hotel Kulusuk has two of them, as you can see here. They were mostly for carrying luggage.

This view is from a hill just up and across the road. That's our hotel on the right and that's the location in Kulusuk Island.

This view is looking straight out our hotel window.

This view is looking to the right out our hotel window.

This is a closeup of the glacier in the last photo.

Tasiilaq to Kulusuk

We had a short ten minute helicopter ride to go from Tasiilaq to Kulusuk.  Kulusuk seemed to me to be a place that I could not determine why anyone was there.

I asked our guide, “Why did you build an airport here?” He looked at me with an odd expression and said, “We didn’t, you did”. In this case, the you means the U.S. government.  More to come on that later. 

Here is Vicky after landing at Kulusuk Airport. The airport was built in 1956 by the US Air Force as part of the early warning defense system. The US closed down their operation in 1991. This is the only airport in eastern Greenland.  

The US military might no longer be interested in Kulusuk but the scientific community has now discovered it.

The airport is number 1 on this map. Our hotel was number 6 and the village of Kulusuk is at number 9. You could walk from one end to the other in about thirty minutes.

Vicky arriving at Hotel Kulusuk. 

Tasiilaq Odds and Ends

Our time in Tasiilaq was fabulous and rewarding. The town, Inuit’s, food, icebergs, whales, and two nights of the Northern Lights all made for a great visit.

These are just a couple of odds and ends things before we leave town.

This installation was just up the hill from our hotel. You can see Vicky standing underneath it. We could not find anything in writing like a sign to give any indication about why this was here or who it belonged to. But I will pick up this story, or a related one, when we get to Kulusuk.

This is a picture in the town's museum. Its a Narwhal or a Narwhale. It's a medium sized, toothed whale that has a large tusk from a protruding canine tooth. They can be 13 to 18 feet long, dive to 5000 feet, and stay under for 25 minutes. They eat halibut, cod, shrimp, squid, and cuttlefish. They get close to their prey and suck them into their mouth.

These are two Narwhale tusks that were in the museum. They were taller than me, so maybe six and a half feet long. The Narwhale is one of only two living species in their family, with the other being the Beluga Whale.

The airport at Tasiilaq was very small. It only had helicopters for air traffic. You can see the landing pad just above the right side of the terminal building. You can see a tent just past the landing pad and the sign said something about a survival training camp.

This is inside the Tasiilaq Airport. You can see Vicky standing and ready to board our helicopter. We boarded out of Gate 1. Care to guess how many gates they had? Yep, just the one.

Iceberg Tour

On one morning we took a two hour boat ride out into the fjord and beyond into the ocean. Our primary goal was to do some close-up inspections of icebergs. This we did and it was not hard for even though this was at the end of August, icebergs abounded around Tasiilaq.

The weather was cool, of course, but it was a beautiful blue-sky day. The icebergs were spectacular.

Vicky didn't have her seasick pills with her, so was feeling uncomfortable. She stood at the bow of the boat, gritted her teeth, and had a fabulous time watching the icebergs. 

We managed to get extremely close on multiple occasions. The colors and noise added to a great trip.

We weren't out watching for whales, but I spotted the first one and after we went over to get closer, we started to see even more. We saw plenty including the one below, but then we went back to visiting the icebergs. It was all good. 

More Tasiilaq Walkabout

This posting is a continuation of our walkabout of the town of Tasiilaq. We spent about five or six hours walking around town but I could have spent more time. 

I will try and point out some of the ways that Tasiilaq is different from where we live. 

Houses in Greenland were once strictly color-coded by ordinance. Black was for police. Red was for emergency buildings or people such as the fire department. Blue was for fishing and so on. I suspect it was sort of like a directory for people to find places easily, particularly in poor weather conditions. Today, you can paint your house or business any color that you want to paint it.

The one thing I want to point out here is that pretty much every house has a ladder that goes to an opening on the second floor. We were told that a sudden storm can come in and drop many feet of snow. Without a ladder to climb into or out of your house from the second floor, you are stuck.

We were told that in two to four weeks, the harbor would be full of ice and the ground well hidden under snow. This person was just being well prepared for it.

We watched these kids playing at school. Each bicycle had two kids. When they started to move, one kid sat and peddled and the other pushed. When they got up to speed, the kid pushing hopped onto the back of the bike...which is exactly how it's done on a dog sled.

This was an unusual house to see. In fact, this was the only house that we saw like it but it was right on the main street and down near the harbor, so probably a very old house.

Hunting and Fishing

The Inuit lead a lifestyle of subsistence and hunt and fish for a living. They also hunt and fish for their own food. They hunt seals, whales, and polar bear.  

Five polar bears were killed right in the town of Tasiilaq this year. We asked our hotel guide about it and he said that he was there for one of the kills. He said that the polar bear was eating pet food. They fired several warning shots to scare the bear away but the bear just ignored the shots and them. As the shooter and hotel owner turned around, they saw about half the town standing there trying to take “selfies” with the bear and themselves. At that point, they realized that they needed to kill the bear (before someone got hurt).

I won't say that every single house has fish hanging near it or on it, but I would say that most houses do. These are mostly cod that are drying on this pole.

The drying fish come like this originally. We saw this boy coming home from school and these were on the front walk.

The story here is about global warming. Climate change has come to Greenland but with an effect that never occurred to me. An Inuit is in his boat at the bottom right side of this iceberg. They go out and hunt and fish in their boats during the months that the water is free of ice. They have very small boats. Climate change has caused changes to the water temperature and the whales tend to stay farther out to sea. Whales used to come right into the bays and fjords. Now the Inuit have to go farther out in the ocean and with small boats and weather changes, it can be very dangerous for them.

This is a hunter coming in with a seal in tow behind his boat. We asked our guide about them hunting seals and he said that seals are to Greenland what squirrels are to north America. He said that seals are the main animal they hunt.

This is in our hotel lobby in Kulusuk. The polar bear skin and the seal skins on the couch were all locally hunted.

Inuit People

The Inuit are indigenous people living in the Arctic regions including Greenland, Alaska, and Canada. In east Greenland, they speak East Greenlandic. There are three dialects of Greenlandic because the people of Greenland are so separated and isolated from each other that the three different dialects developed. There are also west Greenlandic and northern Greenlandic dialects. 

The Inuit make up about 88-89% of the population of Greenland, along with some Inuit/Danish. These are some photos of Tasiilaq’s Inuit population. Karen Gries took most of these photos.

This last photo is a local who is trying hard to keep alive the ancient Inuit tradition of Drum Dancing. He performed for us in our hotel one evening.

Northern Lights

On our first night in Tasiilaq, we spent an hour out in the cold and wind and got rewarded by seeing the Northern Lights. After being back in bed an hour, our tour guide woke us up and told us the Northern Lights were getting strong again. We got dressed and went back outside for another hour to watch them. A woman from Finland was watching with us and said that it was an excellent display. We were very pleased, though our photos were nothing like the ones that we had seen in magazines or online.

The second night, we went to bed at 8 but set our alarm for 10:30. This night, we dressed much more warmly. I got us locked out of the hotel on our balcony and I had to walk around the hotel in the dark. On the other side, I noticed how much better the Lights were, so I got Vicky and we moved around. Eventually, we hiked up above our hotel to a dark area near a lake. We were really impressed and enjoying ourselves. Now, I will quote from my journal of this night:

“But then it happened, at about 11:45pm. We got a nine minute display of the Northern Lights that far outdid all that we had seen so far, by an exponential factor. The entire sky lit up and blocked out all the stars. The color and brightness were magnitudes greater. The sky was swirling and rows of curtains formed and swayed and fell and were replaced by more. It was like seeing an incredible fireworks show for the first time in my life. Vicky and I and six other people were up on the hill and we did enough oohing and aahing for July 4th, Christmas morning, and all the rest of the holidays put together for the whole year. I can’t really put it all into words but it was a nine minute display that we will never forget for the rest of our lives.

We stayed out past midnight and we laid flat on our backs on the hard cold ground with rocks and all to be able to see everything and it was all worth it to stay up late and put up with the cold. It was well worth it for every second of that nine minute display. Now we have really seen the Northern Lights!”

These photos were taken by Karen Gries, one of our travel companions. We appreciate her sharing them with us.

The next morning at breakfast, we talked about it with our Finnish friend who has a lifetime of experience with the Northern Lights. She was gushing about seeing them last night and said it was a thrill to see them. She said it was clearly one of the best displays that she had ever seen. Several other Danes and Greenlanders had much the same to say about last night’s Northern Lights display.

Tasiilaq Walkabout

Our first day in Tasiilaq, Vicky and I went on a two-hour self-guided walk around the town.  On our second day, the hotel owner took us on a three-hour walking tour around town. It’s safe to say that we saw most of the town of Tasiilaq. 

Tasiilaq was actually quite interesting. In this first post from our walkabout, I’d like to highlight some of the quaint aspects that we found. 

Tasiilaq seemed like a desolate place at times. Then I would just stop and look at a scene like this one and think, "WOW, this place is beautiful".

You can see the edge of the asphalt street on the bottom left. Tasiilaq had just paved their main streets a week before for the first time ever. Before that, it was gravel roads and in fact, most roads still are gravel. The highlight here is that you are looking at Tasiilaq's first and only street sign.

This scene was as typical as you can get in Tasiilaq. Both of these houses have fish hanging out to dry and between the two houses is a clothes line to air dry their washed clothing. 

You need a front-porch seat and the only store in town doesn't have one. No problem. You just go down to the harbor, find yourself about eight pallets floating in the harbor and pack them home. A little rough carpentry, some old rubber matting and a pillow - and Presto!

What if your front door hand-railing breaks? You go back to the harbor, find some driftwood, a little more carpentry and you are back in business. I would say that the residents of Tasiilaq are very self-sufficient - because they have to be.

Hotel Ammassalik

Hotel Ammassalik (or Angmagssalik) is up the hill from the harbor towards the back of Tasiilaq.  We had great views, plenty of room, good service, and good food. 

There are 40 rooms in the hotel and we were in room number 40. The hotel was built in 1974 but it was smaller then. It has been added onto over the years, so it had some peculiar passageways and stair cases. 

The hotel was added to on the left, the right, and then behind. Our room was on the left side, just to the right of the outside staircase. It gave us a great view of town.

The windows in our room opened up so we were able to take these photos from our room. I was surprised to find a large (dirt) soccer field just down the hill from our hotel.

This photo is looking to the left from the above photo.

This is just a more zoomed in view of the harbor. I never tired of this view. The icebergs had been farther out in the fjord but a strong wind blew them all towards the back side. One instance, we heard a huge loud boom-bang cracking sound. It turned out to be one of these icebergs splitting apart. 

It was cool in the mornings, to be sure, but we still managed to enjoy coffee out on the deck with our great view.

Greenland Food

Our meals in Greenland were not comparable to our Iceland meals. Every meal in Greenland was buffet style. I’m not sure if this was due to pricing or labor savings or some other reason.

The meals were very good and we could eat as much as we liked. I usually ate too much food, especially the seafood.

I didn't take very many food photos in Greenland. I guess that was because I had a tray in one hand and a glass in my other hand. These first three photos were from our first lunch in Greenland. You can see that seafood is very popular. The first two main trays were shrimp and crayfish and very good.

The next two main trays were cured salmon and smoked salmon, both excellent. You can see some of the salad and vegetable dishes in the background.

On the other side of the aisle from above were the following. baked salmon and broccoli in phyllo dough and yes, we had three types of salmon at this lunch. Next was roast pork that was cooked to perfection. Behind the pork was fried cod (I passed on the cod). On the right was a meat lasagna, also very good but I only had a taste after all the seafood. We were served some pretty good watermelon for dessert.

This was a whole Arctic Charr (fish) which was excellent. You can also see that the vegetables were very fresh. This meal also included a large bucket of fresh mussels and a large plate of smoked halibut.

We didn't eat any meals outside, though we could have. But we did take our beer outside during happy hour. We just couldn't pass up having a brew with this view.

Tasiilaq

Tasiilaq (formerly called Ammassalik or Angmagssalik) lies on the Tasiilaq or King Oscar’s fjord. Tasiilaq is the 7th largest town in Greenland with 2000 residents and it is the biggest town in east Greenland. There has been a permanent settlement here since 1894. Tasiilaq lies just south, about 65 miles, of the Arctic Circle. 

The harbor in Tasiilaq is only open about three to four months a year. The harbor gets mostly free of ice about mid-June. Then it fills back up with ice between mid-September and mid-October. The ice is pack ice or new ice and is generally five to seven feet thick. 

The harbor is the center of town. Hunting and fishing is done by boats and the boats are kept in the harbor.

This photo is from the opposite direction as above but of the same area of Tasiilaq. I took this when we were out in the harbor on a boat.

This is a closer up photo of the harbor. The harbor is only free of ice about three or four months and Tasiilaq must ship in and store enough goods for nine months during that time. The goods are stored in the large red warehouse at the edge of the harbor. The ships, warehouse and the goods are owned and stored by the Danish government. 

This is a wider view of Tasiilaq, taken from the helicopter on our flight into town from Kulusuk. You can see the lake at the end of our Valley of Flowers hike on the left side of the photo about mid-way.

This is a photo of a map with Tasiilaq on the lower left. Here it has the older name of Angmagssalik. You can also see its protected fjord and harbor, one big reason for the town here.

Beyond the Valley of Flowers

The area above the Valley of Flowers reminded me a lot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. The terrain seemed very familiar to me. 

We followed a stream up the canyon. It was cool when we started hiking but this was only a short ways up the canyon and Vicky had already peeled off two layers.

The land was interesting to see. It might not be very green but that is most certainly not due to any lack of water.

The water in the valley was coming from multiple directions but the few streams across our path were easy to cross.

This is one lake just above another lake. It was strange to see all the water and so little vegetation.

This was the end of our hike. I just sat down and relaxed for a bit and watched all the fish jumping in the lake.

Valley of Flowers

Our first introduction into east Greenland from our hotel in Tasiilaq was a hike up into the Valley of Flowers. I had my doubts at first about finding flowers but in fact, we did find some flowers. 

We hiked the valley and kept going up above the valley, along streams, and up to some lakes. Our hike probably took about two hours. It was quite cool when we started but we began peeling off layers of clothing right away. 

This is the edge of town with houses right behind me. At this point, I had some doubts about the Valley of Flowers. 

I should not have doubted. This could well be the garden spot of eastern Greenland.

We found five different kinds of flowers growing in the valley plus some dandelions. Below are some flower highlights.