Today was our last port day in Greenland, and apparently Greenland had absolutely no intention of letting us leave quietly.
We were in Qaqortoq, our third Greenland port, and I had booked us onto an excursion called Iceberg Adventure by Boat. After the last few days, you might think we’d seen enough icebergs....you would be wrong.
I was awake ridiculously early again and sitting in the World Stage by about 8am waiting for our tour to be called. Mike, having clearly developed a much healthier relationship with mornings than I have, arrived somewhat later. Because we were tendering again, they gather everyone together early to make sure they can actually get us ashore on time.
Eventually, at around 8:30am, our number was called and we headed down to Deck A, through the crew corridors and onto the tender for the short ride into Qaqortoq.
The town has a population of only around 3,000 people, so when our ship disgorges a couple of thousand passengers onto shore, we’re not exactly slipping quietly into the background. For a few hours, we basically double the place...subtle.
Seven People, One Tiny Boat and Some Very Large Icebergs
Once ashore, we walked across to another gangway where our actual excursion boat was waiting. And when I say boat, I mean small boat. Seven passengers. That was it!
I asked if I could sit up front beside the driver, it was a YES. I got a forward-facing seat inside, with a fantastic view as we headed out of Qaqortoq harbour.
We only travelled about ten minutes down the coast before reaching our first iceberg. And what an iceberg. It had this extraordinary shape that, to me, looked a bit like an airplane. Apparently it had been even bigger the previous day, and our guide explained that it was slowly melting and expected to disappear completely by mid September.
This particular iceberg had run aground in the small harbour we were in, so it wasn’t going anywhere for the moment.
Being in such a tiny boat meant we could get surprisingly close. You could see the ice continuing below the waterline, the brilliant blue sections of more solid ice, and the cracks running through it.
Our guide explained that the white areas if an iceberg are where there is air trapped within the ice, while the darker blue sections are more compressed and dense with no air. There was also discussion about using this purer ice for whisky on the rocks....now your talking!
Yes, We Ate the Iceberg
We moved around to a smaller iceberg where we could get even closer. Close enough, in fact, that Mike and some of the others could actually touch it.
Our guide broke off pieces of ice and passed them around for us to eat. So naturally, we ate an iceberg. As you do.
What really surprised me was that it didn’t taste salty. I’d already noticed this with the ice we had from the glacier near Nuuk, but somehow my brain still expected ice floating in seawater to taste like seawater.
Apparently the salt is largely excluded as the ice freezes, leaving relatively fresh ice behind. There were even tiny lines and bubbles visible inside it.
Standing in a seven-person boat off the coast of Greenland, eating a piece of iceberg we’d just pulled from the water was definitely not something I had expected to be doing on this trip. And yet here we were.
The Bit You Don’t See Above the Water
Being this close also gave us a fantastic look at just how much of an iceberg is actually underwater.
You always hear that roughly 90% is below the surface, but seeing it from a small boat is quite different. The shape below the waterline was much wider and stranger than what we could see above it.
Which also explains why our driver wasn’t particularly interested in getting too close to certain sections....Fair.
Icebergs can flip, pieces can break away, and enormous chunks of ice have a habit of behaving according to their own schedule rather than the sightseeing timetable. A lesson we were about to get demonstrated rather effectively.
And Then There Was the iPhone
While we were at this smaller iceberg — one of the ladies in our group had been taking photos with her reasonably new iPhone. You can probably see where this is going.
Phone — Hand — Boat — Water — Plop.
Straight into the sea. And because the water there was about seven metres deep, that was that, but the sad thing was, the water was so pure and clear you could see it, just sitting there!
She was understandably upset and a little panicked because the phone also worked as her medical device! It was a pretty brutal reminder of how quickly your entire digital life can disappear over the side of a boat.
Photos, memories, contacts, everything.
Sitting there at the bottom of a Greenland harbour is now an iPhone with one hell of a final photo collection.
Next...Oh Look, Another Iceberg
We rounded the corner and found another iceberg. This one was HUGE.
From our tiny boat it looked enormous, although our guide explained that it had apparently travelled down from northern Greenland and was still nowhere near the scale of some of the truly enormous icebergs found farther north.
To give myself some perspective, I was thinking about the giant car carriers we get coming into Wellington Harbour. Those ships can be around 200 metres long and tower high above the water. This iceberg felt like it was playing in that sort of league. Except, unlike a car carrier, most of this thing was still hiding underwater.
We began moving closer when suddenly there was movement along the right-hand side.
A section was starting to break away. Excellent.
BREAKING ICEBERG!
Over the next ten minutes or so, we watched three large chunks of ice break off the iceberg.
It was spectacular, and perhaps slightly alarming.
Every time another section crashed into the sea, waves rolled away from it towards us. Our driver was brilliant at positioning the boat and turning us into the waves to minimise the impact, but it was a very good reminder that these things are not static lumps of pretty ice designed purely for tourists to photograph.
They are moving, cracking, melting and changing constantly.
After watching how quickly another small boat had to move away, I suddenly became quite comfortable with our driver giving the iceberg a nice wide berth.
He took us around the entire thing and showed us where more cracks were forming. His prediction was that it would probably flip later that afternoon or overnight as the balance changed. If you look at the sqeuence of photos above you can already see the angle of tile change significantly.
And apparently all of these icebergs would likely be completely gone by mid-to-late October.
There is something quite strange about looking at something so enormous and being told that within a couple of months it simply won’t exist anymore.
Back to Qaqortoq
Eventually it was time to head back, which was rather hard to believe because we had only been out for around an hour.
In that hour we had touched an iceberg, eaten an iceberg, watched enormous chunks break away from another iceberg, bounced over the resulting waves and witnessed the ceremonial sacrifice of an iPhone to the Greenlandic sea gods. Not bad before lunch.
Once back in Qaqortoq we still had a couple of missions.
1: find a Greenland sticker for my suitcase.
2: find a supermarket.
Priorities.
We stopped at the information centre to work out where we were going and then headed uphill. Qaqortoq is built on some fairly steep terrain, so this involved several strategic Helen stops along the way while Mike pretended not to notice I was reconsidering all of my life choices.
At one intersection we had a debate about which way to go. Mike chose correctly, not sure why I even debate this at this point!
Cruise Ship Supermarket Invasion
Eventually we found the supermarket. The supermarket was much better stocked than the one we’d visited in Paamiut, but I couldn’t help wondering what it must be like for the locals when a cruise ship arrives, temporarily doubles the population, raids the supermarket shelves and then disappears again seven hours later.
Hopefully there’s another supply shipment coming.
Mike and I bought a few essentials and then sat outside for a while with a drink and did some people-watching.
One thing I’d been curious about was the brightly coloured Greenlandic houses. After doing a little research, I discovered that historically the colours actually had meaning: red buildings were often churches, schools, shops and homes of teachers or priests; yellow was associated with hospitals and medical staff; green with telecommunications and power services; blue with fishing and related industries; and black with police stations.
Today there’s more freedom in the colours used, but it hasn't changed that much, but it explained where that wonderful Greenlandic palette originated.
We also saw some local art carved into the rocky hillside.
The Great Greenland Sticker Hunt
There was still one important mission outstanding.
The sticker. I had managed to find stickers in every other Greenland port for my suitcase, and because this was our last day in Greenland, failure was not an option.
Back down near the port I went into the main information centre and souvenir shop, which was absolutely packed — I searched shelves. I searched racks. I searched every surface I could see. Nothing — I was almost ready to admit defeat when I spotted a tray sitting beside the register. STICKERS — Score!
I managed to get a Greenland flag, a Qaqortoq sticker for my suitcase and a few cute ones for my journals.
Mission accomplished.
Outside, Mike had found himself a table and chair and was happily watching the world go by. We love people-watching and generally has at least one story for me by the time I return. Which often starts with "people are so stupid..."
I occasionally remind him that one day we will be the stupid people somebody else is watching.
Actually, there’s a reasonable chance we already are.
Goodbye, Greenland
There was a bit of a queue for the tender back to the ship, but after such an incredible morning neither of us was particularly bothered.
I knew Greenland had been somewhere I wanted to visit, but I don’t think I realised quite how much I was going to love it.
Paamiut, Nuuk, Arsuk Fjord, Qaqortoq — every day had been completely different.
The little towns. The fjords. The mountains. The enormous empty spaces. The people. The glaciers.
And, obviously, the icebergs.
So. Many. Icebergs. And somehow I still wasn’t sick of looking at them.
Back aboard we headed straight to the Lido for lunch. I’d skipped breakfast and was starving, and we timed it beautifully just as lunch opened, meaning everything was fresh and — even better — we found a good seat overlooking Qaqortoq.
Once your excursion is finished, there is something rather lovely about cruising. You can be up at 4am if you want, run around Greenland all morning, and then at 2pm decide that your major commitment for the next few hours is sitting in a bar with a drink and your journal.
No commute.nnNo chores. No guilt.
Hell yeah. By about 2:30pm, however, the early start caught up with us and we retreated to the cabin for a snooze.
Oh Look, There’s Greenland Outside Our Window
We had a slightly later dinner at 6:45pm and missed the Billboard quiz entirely thanks to my rather successful afternoon nap.
We returned to what had now become “our” section of the Dining Room at the back of the ship, where the lovely crew had been looking after us. The service was great and the views were even better as we continued sailing along Greenland’s southern coast.
After days of icebergs, they were somehow still completely mesmerising.
Eventually we decided to call it a night, and Mike was starting to get a cold.
I was lying around watching YouTube when Mike suddenly nudged me. “Look outside!”
There was a HUGE ROCK WALL outside our balcony.
And when I say outside, I mean outside.
One moment we had open water. The next it felt as though Greenland had wandered over and parked itself beside the ship.
What on earth was going on?
Surprise! Prince Christian Sound
It turned out we were entering Prince Christian Sound.
Coordinates duly recorded in the journal because apparently this holiday has turned me into a part-time navigator: 60.107461°N, 44.469071°W
We entered the sound at around 9pm, with sunset not until approximately 10:10pm.
Prince Christian Sound stretches for roughly 100 kilometres through southern Greenland, connecting the Labrador Sea in the west with the Irminger Sea/North Atlantic to the east.
And it was spectacular. Towering mountains rose almost vertically from the water beside us. Tiny settlements appeared in places that looked completely impossible to live in. The water was calm, the evening was beautifully clear and the light just kept changing as the sun slowly dropped.
We had absolutely no idea this was going to happen.
Which somehow made it even better.
I’d thought Qaqortoq and the iceberg adventure would be our grand Greenland finale.
Greenland apparently disagreed.
Just One More Thing…
The sky stayed remarkably clear, giving us an incredible sunset and hours of beautiful evening light through the sound.
People were wandering quietly around the decks taking photos, crew included. There wasn’t the usual noise and chatter. People were almost whispering to each other, as though everyone instinctively knew this was one of those moments you simply shut up and take in.
Mike must have filled an SD card over the next couple of hours. And I can hardly blame him. We were going to be travelling through Prince Christian Sound until around 3am.
So much for our early night. This was one of those bucket-list experiences I didn’t even know belonged on my bucket list.
That’s probably the best way I can describe Greenland.
I knew I wanted to come here. I expected icebergs, colourful houses and spectacular scenery.
What I didn’t expect was how much this place would get under my skin.
Our final Greenland port day had given us a seven-person boat, enormous icebergs, iceberg ice for morning tea, a calving iceberg, a drowned iPhone, a supermarket raid, successful sticker hunting, a strategically important afternoon nap and then — just when we thought Greenland was finished with us — an unexpected nighttime journey through Prince Christian Sound.
Greenland, you absolute show-off. What a way to say goodbye.
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