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Live the adventures of Dan Walker's travels through reading his travel journal. The travel journals are listed below in descending order of date. To search the travel journals, use the keyword search at the bottom of the page.

Journal Entry:

Sunday, August 24, 2014 09:43:57

ICELAND, GREENLAND & ARCTIC 2014: 4 Reykjavik, Iceland to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland

Thursday, August 21, 2014

We had an easy morning, not arriving to the Reykjavik airport until 10:45 after getting lost only once. The car return was painless, and surprisingly our baggage was accepted without charge even though it was a bit overweight. The friendly Air Iceland people operate domestic flights in Iceland and to three destinations in Greenland. They are a different company from Iceland Air, the international airline.

At the small airport the rental car return was right outside the baggage area where luggage carts were available for the short walk to the check in area. Security, surprisingly, was very slow and very thorough, going through each carry on bag carefully and patting people down. I'm not sure what they were so concerned about, neither Iceland nor Greenland are exactly a terrorist hot spots!

The flight was on a 28 seat Dash 8-200 where the seat spacing was more than adequate for my legs. There were only 11 passengers, so everyone was able to spread out. Marilynn sat in one of the empty seats left by close friends who were to be with us, but had to cancel due to medical problems. They are very missed.

The pilot's door remained open during the flight, and passengers were welcome to look at the cockpit or move to other seats if they wanted. All things considered it was a very comfortable 3 hr 10 minute flight. We were lucky over both coasts of Greenland, where clear weather made it possible to see places where the ice cap was calving into iceberg filled ocean. The icecap covers 80% of the surface of Greenland, reaching an altitude of 3,500 meters (11,480 ft) at its highest point.

On arrival in Nuuk there was literally no one around the small terminal – no immigration or customs, not even an Air Greenland representative with whom to confirm our flight to Kangerlussuaq tomorrow. There were taxis, fortunately, so we we got to the very good Hans Engles Hotel in style. The currency here is the Danish Kroner, and although I had both euros and US dollars the taxi fellow preferred taking a credit card. Credit cards are accepted everywhere.

We thought Iceland was expensive, but Nuuk has raised the bar to new levels. The hotel was $US335 per night, and where wifi in Iceland was free, here is is $US12 per half hour, the short ride in the taxi was $21 and 2 hamburgers with chips accompanied by a beer and a wine was $85 at a local restaurant. We walked around the old section of town and through a modern shopping mall, but found little of great interest. The newer apartment buildings are 7 or more stories high, and the older 4 story ones look badly maintained and run down. They are used for government subsidized housing It is a huge contrast to Iceland where everything was so well looked after!

There are no trees other than a few straggling survivors planted by home owners. English is spoken by quite a few people, but not all. There were no native peoples in Iceland when the Vikings arrived, but here a high percentage of the population are Eskimo Residents speak Greenlandic, usually with Danish as their second language.

Nuuk, the largest city in Greenland, has about 16,000 people, while the whole country has about 52,000. It was established by the Lutheran minister Hans Engles in 1728. There is a university with about 500 students, and the seat of the Greenland government plus some foreign diplomatic representatives including and an Iceland embassy. The main industry is fishing. For a small place the large number of cabin cruiser pleasure boats surprised me – it seems almost every family has one! Apparently boating here is wonderful – Nuuk is on the second largest fiord network in the world, and there are thousands of islands and channels all protected from the open ocean. There are no roads out, so most transport is by water – people's boats are used as a base for hunting expeditions as well as for transportation and pleasure cruising.

Friday, August 22, 2014

I set off to get some money changed into Danish Kroner, as that is the currency of Greenland, so was at the bank before they opened at 9:30 AM. When the doors opened I went straight to the only teller, who told me I had to take a number. He pointed out the number dispensing machine, which now had a line up out the door and onto the street. I'd have never got back to the hotel in time for the tour we had arranged, but the teller was adamant that the number is compulsory, so I left.

Grace, the car owner, driver and tour guide picked us up on time at 9:45 AM before picking up an Australian tourist from Melbourne. It was foggy with low visibility. The two hour tour cost about $110 for the two of us, and was quite good. Grace had to remind the Australian various of times that the tour was about Greenland, not Australia, as she couldn't get a word in edgewise to explain what we were seeing He finally got the idea once he'd expressed his opinion that it would be better to kill the hunters rather than the animals. Greenpeace isn't a favourite charity in Greenland, so his concept should get him into some interesting situations in this land of reindeer and seal hunters!.

I was quite amazed when we went to an area of town with good views and a little larger houses, but with no landscaping, and was told houses in the area cost more than a million US dollars each. It was interesting that land is not sold in Greenland, it is here for anyone to use. The town sets rules for the size of lots, and people can then sign up for them, although they must pay a one time fee for services installed by the city. They then have 2 years to build or they lose their right to the property. There is no property tax. Houses can be sold by the owners and the sale registered. According to Grace construction costs are about $US 3,700 per sq. meter.

We arrived at the airport to find our flight was delayed for two hours due to fog, then delayed for another hour after that. Fortunately there was a snack bar with some light food and beer. Announcements for flights were only in Greenlandic, so Marilynn requested that they announce our flight in English, which they did. This is the pre 911 style of flying – no security or any other kind of check – just head out the door when the flight is called. We passed most of the time playing cards before the 50 minute flight finally got us to Kangerlussuaq where the airport terminal is in the government owned Kangerlussuaq Hotel and uses the same cafeteria as hotel guests. There is no restaurant, but there is a bar that opens at 6 PM.

The hotel is massive, two stories high and roughly a city block long. We were at the extreme end, and there is no one to help with luggage. The frail, kindly lady at reception relieved me of the $US 855 price for the three nights we'll be here and gave us directions to the room. This required climbing up two flights of stairs to reception, a trek down a long hallway, down a short flight of stairs to another long hallway, down two more flights of stairs and along a final hallway to get to our room. This was made difficult by a heavy suitcase Marilynn has with items to be taken from Victoria to Costa Rica plus our carry on cases and backpacks. It was a tough haul - I'm not looking forward to the return trip!

The rooms are fairly large, but pretty much bare bones – about what you would expect from a 2 star hotel in the $40 price range. Squirt bottles for soap are in the bathroom, but no other accessories of any kind. It doesn't look like much had been done in the way of maintenance or improvement since we last spent three nights here in 2007. Apparently the government is trying to sell the hotel to someone in private business, but I think the cheapest way to do something is tear it down and start again. There are only 500 people in Kangerlussuaq now. The only thing it has going for it is the only runway in Greenland long enough for large aircraft, courtesy of the US government during WWII.

Once the bar opened at 6 PM we had a couple of drinks, and the bartender, receptionist, & everything else lady said we could get something to eat in the cafeteria and bring it up to the bar to eat. Although the hotel advertises food in the bar, that is not to be believed!

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Today was foggy and pouring rain. After breakfast we enquired in the gift shop/tour office about a trip to the edge of the icecap that we had enjoyed visiting last time, however the price is now over $US 700 so we found that easy to turn down, It is only a 45 minute drive from the hotel. There is no one in town willing to rent a car for a couple of days, so we are stranded.

After lunch we went to the grocery store in pouring rain to buy some beer, wine and snacks for the room, however were informed that there are no liquor sales on Saturday afternoons or Sundays! I cursed my way back to the hotel, but the lady who looked after us last night solved the problem by getting us beer and wine from the bar, even though it wasn't open, to take to the room

The afternoon passed playing cards and catching up on the computer. Marilynn bought the expensive 3 hour internet package – it is not possible to buy less time than that. At 6 we went to the bar where we met Roberto and Bruno, the pilots of a chartered Lear jet. The are here for two days waiting for their passenger who was in Nuuk for her mother's funeral – they will fly her back to Montreal tomorrow.

The four of us boarded the bus for the Rowing Club, where there is an excellent restaurant with a good menu that included local sea food, musk ox, reindeer and so on. Marilynn and I had the very good musk ox, and between the four of us we did serious damage to a bottle of wine and a decent amount of beer, plus liqueurs later. As we were the last by far to leave the restaurant we had the full bus to ourselves for the return trip.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

We just made it to breakfast before the 9 AM closing, where we said goodby to Roberto. His passenger was on one of several planes that arrive, taking advantage of the clear weather today. It is overcast, but no fog.

We lay around most of the day, reading and doing some work on the computer. Tonight we'll go back to the Rowing Club for their buffet dinner. It apparently will feature a large selection of game meat and fish.

Tomorrow we expect most of the passengers for the cruise ship to arrive by charter flight from Copenhagen a little after noon. Apparently there will be a bus tour before we are all taken to the ship, which we will have to board by going out in Zodiacs. We've had more than enough of the idle life here!

We are told that there is no telephone or internet communication on the ship, so we will next be heard from about September 6 from Costa Rica with a description of the cruise.