We got to sleep in today, although we woke up before the alarm again. Something about forgetting to close the drapes and having sun stream in by 4am! At breakfast, we ran into a couple we had met on our Adriatic cruise last January. Thinking about all the people who take more than one trip with this company, it’s surprising we haven’t run into more of them already!
At 10, we headed out to go to the National Museum, and then the airport. They are next to each other – we are using the smaller local airport even though this is an international trip. The National Museum was organized to take you on a path through Iceland’s history, starting from settlement in 870. Unfortunately, another large group had arrived before us, so Jim and I and Audrey headed upstairs to the end and started from the back. They had a display of artifacts by decades, and even listed who donated them – I saw skates like the ones I had as a kid, and they also had one of IBM’s first ‘portable’ computers – we called it a luggable—it was the size of a small suitcase and probably weighed 15-25 lbs! They had a whole room of carved horns too – drinking horns and power horns – all very elaborately carved.
Snorri took our luggage to the airport while we had a boxed lunch --sort of a Chinese Beef Salad -- and checked us in while we ate – another clue this wasn’t going to be a high security trip, even though it was officially international. When we got our seat assignments, Jim and I discovered we were both in window seats in different rows, so we started looking for people to trade with and managed to make 2 moves to get us in the same row, on the other side of the plane. There was actually security here – we had to show our passports as we entered the boarding area and they ran our bag thru a check, but it was quick and painless compared to the US.
When we boarded, we realized that we were the only people on the plane! The 2 hour flight was uneventful (a good thing), but as we neared Greenland, I saw land and sent Jim to a window seat on the other side (the side we were supposed to be on originally) to take pictures, then just before we all had to stay where we were, I moved over too – I think most of the group had moved to the right side of the plane for the landing! There were thousands of little icebergs floating around and a very rocky landscape. We learned later that this is not the part of Greenland where Erik the Red settled – he went to the west side which was more arable and more like Iceland. But the stories about the name being a marketing ploy seemed quite believable – there is no agriculture here at all, not even grazing animals.
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| Approaching Greenland -- photo from the plane |
Our hotel is modest and the room even more so. Internet connection is expensive -- $10 per half hour, so no connections while we're here. The bathroom is also tiny, and although there is a curtain around the shower corner, I think it will be advisable for the non-showering person to stay outside the bathroom while showering is occurring.
Our first excursion was about a 2k walk into the town of Kap Dan, a town of 300, mostly Inuit, though some Danes maintain summer homes here. Even though Greenland has a level of independence, they still are largely supported by Denmark. Our guide, a Latvian college student who is interning here for 4 months, said that up to 80% of the population is on Danish welfare and have no interest in working, not that there are a lot of jobs in any case. But available jobs, like at the airport, go unfilled and parents don’t see the need to educate their children due to the arrival twice a month of free money from Denmark. (Our later guides had somewhat less jaded views of the situation.) There is some fishing and seals are also killed for food. Running water in homes is rare, and one house is setup as a service house, where there is running water, laundry facilities, etc. We poked around a little souvenir shop and the local grocery –the grocery was apparently baking, because the aroma as we walked in was heavenly.
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| Our guide, Christine, points on a road side pole to the red tape, marking last year's snow depth |
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| Kap Dan |
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| Sled dogs during their summer vacation. You do NOT pet or feed them! |
After our walk back, we took a jeep ride on the rest of the roads in the area – 5k to the top of the hill (1000 feet up) to the site of a former US DEW station. There isn’t much left because when the US arrived, they agreed to take it all apart, but some building foundations are still there. We stopped a couple times on the way up to take photos of the scenery, which was spectacular, if stark.
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| Kap Dan from the DEW Line road |
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| Base of the former DEW Line barracks. |
After dinner, we collapsed early – Greenland time is 2 hours earlier than Iceland, so our bodies are out of whack again.
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