Greenland - Stranded in Kulusuk

Hello!

We've all heard of the "wild west" but in Greenland it's the "wild east". The east coast is remote and sparsely populated which is exactly why we wanted to go there. There are only two flights a week from Nuuk, the capital, plus a couple of flights from Iceland. Knowing in advance that weather can change quickly in Greenland and that flights subsequently get delayed, we knew it was a risk coming here but we had to do it!

We flew from Kangerlussuaq to Nuuk, overnighted in one of the best hotel rooms we've had this trip, then flew to Kulusuk. As we approached the airport the skies were misty but we could see icebergs beneath us. The plane landed in the misty rain to a round of applause from the passengers!

Kulusuk has a population of about 200 people and is on a large island. This whole region is a series of islands. The tiny airport was chaotic with people trying to get in and out. We had to wait ages for our bags and, judging by how sopping wet they were, they must have been sitting out on the tarmac for a bit. We were eventually picked up by a van to take us to our hotel, the only one in Kulusuk. Our room was tiny, with two very separate single beds, but the view from our window was amazing! The communal dining area was large, warm and comfortable, which later proved to be a great bonus.

I was fascinated by the small icebergs that were stranded on the shore near the hotel when the tide went out and I explored these a couple of times. I loved being able to touch them and see them up close.

Icebergs in front of our hotel.

This one looks like a cormorant.

Some were such an incredible blue!

Selfie on an iceberg!

The sound of a melting iceberg.

I'm constantly amazed at the variety of tiny things that grow in this climate.

On our second day the skies began to clear and suddenly we could see the mountains on the other side of the fjord.

Most of the people staying in our hotel were a part of small tour groups. If you look closely in the bottom right of this photo you'll see an American lady who went for a quick dunk in the sea beside the icebergs!

The hotel was a bit of an oasis in this wild environment. The town itself was a 20 minute walk from the hotel and we ended up there a few times. We went on a Sunday at church time hoping to see some traditional costumes but people just wore normal clothes and we only saw about half a dozen people go to the church.

The little town was quite picturesque.

There were so many icebergs!

A dog sled, icebergs and a red/brown building. You can't get much more Greenlandic than that!

These things were all lovely but we were here for something special - a walk inside an ice cave! The date was changed due to the weather so we were thrilled when the weather started clearing the night before the rescheduled date.

I was awake for a while during the night and it was lovely to see the sky change through the night. Now that we are outside the arctic circle, the sun actually sets although not far enough to produce complete darkness.

The scene at 2am was stunning. A complete lack of wind meant that the mountains reflected on the surface of the fjord.

It was a little lighter at 4am.

The day was perfect with a brilliant blue sky - yay! We met Nicco, the Italian living in Greenland who discovered the cave. Seeing an ice cave in Greenland in summer is a pretty rare thing so we were excited about the trip.

We boated out to a nearby glacier, walked up onto the lateral part of the glacier then put crampons on. It was a short but steep climb to the top and the views back across the glacier were stunning. 

The entrance to the ice cave was very unassuming. You would never know it's there if, like us, you didn't know what to look for. Nicco was excited to show us.

We entered the cave and it was amazing! It wasn't as blue as I expected. My photos show lots of green but the colour wasn't quite this strong. Nonetheless, the ice itself was incredible. It was so smooth and clear. 

The colours varied according to how thick the ice was.

It was the details of the ice that surprised me. We could see "fingerprints" of the ice clusters where water had worn the ice smooth.

Ice bubbles that get trapped in the snow gradually get compressed over the centuries and distort into weird shapes. I was smitten by the beautiful patterns they created.

In some places we had to stoop under the low ceiling.

In other places the ceiling was quite high, although not as high as this photo makes it look.

John McMahon, defender of the cave! Yes, that's an icicle.

Amazing colours were everywhere.

We emerged back outside to wonderful views of the glacier in brilliant sunshine.

The view after we come out of the glacier.

We had to be careful to avoid quicksand on our return walk! Nicco demonstrated what it's like but started sinking after a few steps!

Back in the boat we sailed slowly past the glacier face.

Nicco grabbed a fresh small iceberg, broke chunks off and poured us a gin each! There's nothing like ice and bubbles in your drink that are many thousands of years old!

We motored towards the mouth of the fjord where larger icebergs were stranded. Nicco is passionate about ice and was full of information and enthusiasm about the icebergs.

I love the stunning green where the bottom part of the iceberg lies under the water.

See the ledge around the left and top of this iceberg? That's the old water line from when the berg stood upright. It has since tipped over, revealing how much of it was underwater before.

This enormous iceberg had an arched doorway in it. I would love to have boated through it!

This stunning blue iceberg was melting before our eyes.

By the time we finished the trip the brilliant blue skies had gone. We mentioned to Jakob, the hotel manager, that we would like to do something in the afternoon as bad weather was expected the next day. He suggested we join a German tour group on a trip up to Dye-4, an old American early detection radar from the Cold War that's located on a hill. There's not much left of the system but it's a great lookout point.

We jumped in the van and it was weird being with a group that all spoke German. The tour leader was a classic. She was so serious and so dominating. We felt like we had to be good children and do what we were told! To our surprise though, she included us and translated a lot of what she said to English which was helpful.

It was cold at the top but the views were superb!

On our way back I noticed some strange patterns in the sky. The tour leader said they were a type of aurora. I can't find any info on this but the patterns certainly looked very aurora-like. We won't see auroras while we're here as it's never dark enough at this time of year so I was pretty happy to see this!

We still had another full day here after this as we had to wait for the next flight so we went for a walk to the shop in town for something to do. A container ship was there and a smaller boat was bringing supplies in. It had to push icebergs out of the way so it could get in!

We returned to Kulusuk in the afternoon, only this time by van as it was freezing and wet. A local lady has opened a museum showcasing her family's traditional items. She showed us around at it was fascinating! The Inuit traditionally lived very primitive lives and it wasn't that long ago either.

There are no trees in this part of Greenland so there is no wood. All wooden items, such as canoes, have to be built from driftwood, which floats here all the wayfrom Siberia. They used to burn seal fat for heating and cooking.

A shoulder blade bone used as a shovel with a bird wing as a brush. 

Clothing made from polar bear, seal and husky skins.

These items fascinated us. They are wooden maps! The map on the right depicts all the islands in the area as knobs. The map on the left shows all the fjords of the mainland.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast for the day of our flight was terrible! The left column is the hour of the day, the second-last column is the wind speed in metres per second. That equates to 100kms/hour!

People were frantically trying to catch earlier flights and the poor manager was swept off his feet trying to juggle passengers like us who were clearly going to be delayed. As expected, the weather started to change. The winds became crazy! They howled around the old building and it shuddered and shook. As we headed into the night it was like being in a tornado. We later heard that it reached 150kms/hr! Pieces of timber went flying through the air and the rain pounded on the windows. The only thing missing was thunder and lightning. We kept getting woken up during the night by the roar of the wind. The poor sled dogs didn't necessarily stay in their kennels. Many of them just slept outside as usual.

The sea turned a muddy brown and the icebergs got pounded so much that a lot of them melted or were blown to other areas. I bravely opened a window to take this video!

The little wind meter thingie outside was going crazy.

The storm raged for a day and a half. Fortunately, the nicest of the American tour groups was the one we were shut in with, as well as other people. The group's very knowledgeable leader came up with things to entertain them and we were able to join in. There was a group of American scientists there too who were researching glaciers so they gave a talk on what they'd been doing. The tour group leader showed a couple of great movies set in Greenland too. John and I played the Kulusuk Scrabble Championships and caught up on online stuff although with everyone on the internet it was incredibly slow. 

Luckily for us, the hotel was great. Most people hung out in the huge, warm and comfortable dining room. The food was varied and plentiful. We had everything from Indian to Thai to Mexican. We must have put on kilos eating all this good food and not exercising!

We got to know the staff. The manager is half Danish and half Greenlandic. The amazing chef is a Canadian lady who married a local guy. She now even has her own sled dogs! One lovely staff member was born in Colombia. He and his three brothers ended up in an orphanage and all four of them were adopted by a Danish family. Can you imagine adopting four boys at once and transporting them half way across the world to a totally foreign country?

There was an amazing stock of excellent Italian red wines there so John was happy!

We woke the next day to silence. The wind had stopped! Flights recommenced but there was only one flight back to Nuuk and we weren't on it. We had to wait another day! Luckily Air Greenland covers all our expenses here as we have already paid for our accommodation in Nuuk that we haven't even stayed in yet.

The wind and waves had decimated the icebergs outside our window and sculpted some into interesting formations.

In an effort to get some exercise after sitting on our bums for nearly two days, we walked back up the road to Dye-4, where we went in the van with the Germans previously. You can count the roads in this area on one hand so there weren't many other options for us. Blue sky appeared for a while and it was all stunningly beautiful.

Back near the hotel, the fjord was perfectly still.

We had still another day to fill in so we enquired about how we could get to Tasiilaq, the next town. We could go by helicopter (we didn't even ask the cost of that!) or by boat, however the storm had pushed so many icebergs into the bay at Tasiilaq that the boat was stuck there and couldn't get out! We were only here for six days. Imagine what it must be like to live here. And this is summer!

So we had showers and prepared to snuggle down for the evening but then we received a message from our ice-cave guide asking if we would like to go out whale watching. It was expensive and we were tired so we said no but, as we watched how beautiful the evening became, we changed out minds. We were so glad we did!

Nicco picked us up at 8pm (yes 8pm) and we jumped onto a very small boat. The water was smooth as silk and the air was incredibly clear. The mountains and the fjord looked stunning! We were only out in the water for 5 or 10 minutes before we spotted huge spouts of water shooting up from the sea. For the next hour or so we followed along as two humpback whales worked together to catch the small fish that live in the fjord. Yes, humpback whales eat fish!

The two whales played tag team coming up for air right near the tiny town of Kulusuk.

For a while the whales were hard up against a cliff. I'm pretty sure they were using the cliff wall to corner fish against. Apparently they also blow bubbles in a circle and trap fish inside the circle.

Meanwhile, a little further out to sea, a third whale kept making its presence known by the huge breaths it took. It seemed to dive more than 'our' whales did.

It was easy to tell our two whales apart as one had a very light tail underneath.

This was clearly the other one diving.

The grand finale happened in the last five minutes when 'our' two whales joined the other one and there was lots of diving and activity. Sadly, my pics weren't much good. Even sadder was the fact that our time was up. We motored back through the fjord and, at nearly 10pm, it was stunning.

What a trip! Walking back along the shore to our hotel, the icebergs, fjord, mountains and glacier all looked so amazing.

We walked past the dogs that belong to the Canadian chef at our hotel. Her dogs definitely get treated better than most. I love that this one slept on a dog sled.

Her pup was adorable!

Once we patted the pup, all the dogs wanted a pat but we're not allowed to pat any adult dogs. They howled because they wanted to be patted!

Back at the hotel, we were too pumped to go to bed. A few people were at the bar so we joined them. They were a Danish guy who had a Greenlandic wife and a Greenlandic guy who had a European wife (we don't know which country she was from). It was really interesting to talk to them about life in Greenland. From them and others we learned that East Greenland has an alcohol problem. Partly due to this, the nearby town of Tasiilaq, which has a population of 2,000 people, has 300 kids in foster care! There are also other cultural issues which have created this problem. It's all very strange.

As we were talking, I noticed the sky growing pink through the windows. Soon, the group of us plus a few staff were all watching one of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen.

Two of our favourite staff were leaning out the windows watching the sunset and I was leaning out the middle window between them. I love these pics!

Haldora.

Dita. I've probably spelled both these names completely wrong.

Our last day was wonderfully clear again, but it was still cold. We still couldn't go to Tasiilaq so we did a couple of walks. Both walks were to places where we hoped to see whales but our luck ran out this time.

We walked through Kulusuk again. I love how sleds often match the colours of buildings.

We scrambled around the hills behind the town to the area where we saw the whales last night. We didn't see whales but there was beauty at every turn.

We also found the town's rubbish tip. Sadly, the lowest point of the gully that the rubbish was in flowed directly into the sea. 

In the town, an outdoor shop had been set up, selling things that weren't normally stocked in the shop. There was quite a lot of shopping going on with people carrying home large bags of goods. People used the occasion as an opportunity to catch up and people sat around chatting.

One man approached the shop with a rifle. He put it down outside the shop by resting it against a staircase post that a few kids bikes were leant against. Thoughtfully, he removed the bullet case before he left it there!

One last shot of the beautiful town.

After lunch we went for one last walk. We watched the current carry many icebergs along the fjord while just as many stayed still because they were stuck on the bottom.

The views were still amazing, even when they didn't include icebergs or fjords.

In our first few days at Kulusuk we met a number of non-Greenlanders who had chosen to settle here. At first I couldn't understand it. Yes, it's beautiful but living here all year round would be so challenging. Part of the year has permanent daylight and part has permanent darkness. Fresh food doesn't come in for around 7 months over winter. The weather can be crazy and wild, as we saw. Transport is dependent on the weather and there is no doctor in the town. Yet, the place grew on me. The beauty of the area is incredible. If the skies are clear then the fjord is like a magical world. If the weather is rainy or misty then that creates its own beauty. Being stranded here was exciting and fun. We were very well-fed and very comfortable which certainly helped our outlook!

From left to right, Haldora, me with a black eye because I hit my cheek on a sharp edge, and Shelley the amazing chef.

When we were stuck here I was a bit frustrated at first but I now think it's the best thing that happened to us. The last couple of days really changed my mind about how I see the town. I felt that we gained an insight into a very special area that we otherwise wouldn't have had. I'll never forget the magic of this place.

Heather and John