Greenland Travelog: Tasiilaq
Day 5. June 7th, 2016.
Tasiilaq, Greenland.
After scarfing down the rest of our pasta-goulash-canned-vegetables at a little past two in the morning last night I woke up naturally around 10 am—another solid night’s sleep.
I immediately popped on the water heater, since I knew this Greenlandic version of an AirBnB had instant coffee in the cupboard and we had bought milk from the Pilersuisoq the day before. I was happy to feed my caffeine addiction, although I’m even happier that I’ve significantly cut down on the amount of coffee I’ve been drinking since leaving Vancouver.
I made us breakfast— DrOetker Pizza of course—and then a man came to the door saying Lars sent him to take us to Tasiilaq, the de facto capital of Eastern Greenland, with over 2,100 inhabitants, or approximately eight times larger than the next largest place we’ve been to thus far.
We packed up our gear and walked over to Tinit harbour in three trips (we have a lot of gear) to load up the boat. On the way to Tasiilaq, we stopped by an abandoned settlement with a dozen or so houses and a school attached to a church. The classroom was still littered with books and graffiti from travellers who have visited the site since the settlement bellied up in 1999.
The boat trip to Tasiilaq was much rougher than the previous rides. While before we were able to ride up and down the fjords to get to the settlements, for this trip we had to ride on the open sea, with large waves rocking little the boat side to side.
One benefit to being out on the open ocean was the icebergs you get to see out there are far larger than the ones in the fjords. I’m assuming only the really massive icebergs still survive here from the winter and by massive I mean they would have dwarfed cruise ships had they been side by side. These things were incredible pieces of nature, resembling their own snow and ice islands off the Greenlandic coast.
The first thing I noticed about Tasiilaq was the cars and paved streets. I have not seen a car in days; in fact, I had not seen one in Greenland at all until Tasiilaq. A large container ship from the Royal Arctic Lines was unloading cargo at the harbour and lots more people were milling about the docks. The locals in Tasiilaq are far more fashion-conscious than in the settlements, as makeup, earrings and trendy clothing (for what my sense of it is anyway if any) became obvious almost immediately.
Backwards baseball caps reminiscent of home and dyed hair are common in Tasiilaq, East Greenland’s city of sorts, and there is more than one store, and even a restaurant and I’ve counted at least five trampolines here as well (I have no idea why trampolines are so popular here, but it’s kind of amazing).
The town is also clean, without heaps of garbage strewn about the pathways, and it had central plumbing and running water, all significant luxuries. I was able to even hop online for thirty minutes in the late afternoon to check emails and make sure things back at home were okay.
Karim walked around the town in the evening, stopped for some groceries (the Pilersuisoq had a lot more options here) and spend the evening chatting about how to make it as a photographer and how to grow one’s business along the same lines as one’s passion.
It’s just past midnight now as I write this post and the sun recently went down behind the mountains surrounding the town; tonight’s sleep will be in a real bed.
Tomorrow morning I would like to check out the post office before taking the boat back to Kulusuk. We are headed to Greenland’s capital—Nuuk—tomorrow evening without any plan mind you, but at least we will get to fly directly over the famed icecap.
Day 6. June 8th, 2016.
Nuuk, Greenland.
We woke up pretty late in Tasiilaq and scrambled to dry our still-damp laundry before shoving it into our packs. We popped the last of our frozen pizzas in the oven to get them cooked before our ferry to Kulusuk, they finished just in time; I slid them right back into the boxes they came in and took them with me to the ferry.
Our ride to Kulusuk was relatively uneventful; save for the massive icebergs we passed on the way. The trip was pretty rocky, being at open sea and all and I was on the verge of getting seasick, thankfully the ride only took about forty minutes.
Once there, we scuttled over the seaweed-covered rocks at the harbour, that just days ago when we had arrived in Greenland was clogged with icebergs, with all of our gear and walked it up a short way to the local Pilersuisoq and asked them if we could store it there as well as book a ride to the airport for later in the afternoon.
At 300 Krone for the ride, it was practically highway robbery, but again, we had no choice with all the gear we were carrying and there were no other rides available in Kulusuk.
Karim and I spend the afternoon wandering around Kulusuk. There was a day tour group of foreign tourists who had just flown in from Reykjavik for the day wandering around as well; we ended up joining them for the first hour or so, and then wandered off to do our own thing.
We headed into the hills surrounding the settlement and napped on rocks with a spectacular view over both Kukusuk as well as the sea. Every hour or so an Air Greenland helicopter from Tasiilaq would buzz overhead, shuttling passengers between the town and the airport.
We had a picnic lunch on the rocks and then walked down back into the settlement to grab our packs and shuttle over to the airport.
Tons of sled dogs lined the pathways; one dog couple had newborn puppies and they were carefully carrying them in their mouths to prevent them from falling down the embankment onto the pathway below. I watched them for about ten minutes until I spotted our plane, a bright red Air Greenland Dash 8, making a turn over the settlement and head over to the airport.
That was our cue to head over to the airport as well, so we walked back to the Pilersuisoq to find our bags already packed into the car. “There you are,” the store manager said upon seeing us; “ready to go?”
With that, we hopped into the pickup truck and drove the ten or so minutes to Kulusuk’s little airport. We were the last to arrive, even though we were still very much on time for the flight, and after shifting batteries into carry-ons, check-in was simple. We did not even need to present our passports, they already assumed we were the two people yet to check-in, and there is no security check at Greenlandic Airports, so we just weighed our packs and then they called everyone to board the aircraft five minutes later.
We walked straight onto the plane, seating was not assigned, and before long we were on our way to Nuuk, about thirty minutes earlier than our scheduled departure time. The flight took us directly over the ice cap, a bright, glowing white as far as the eye can see.
After an hour and a half, we were in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital of about 17,000 people.
We had no plan nor any real idea of where to go, so we ended up taking a taxi from the airport around town until we found somewhere acceptable—an amazing little hostel called Vandrehuset—we practically had the place to ourselves and with full WiFi, beds, showers and a kitchen, we were thrilled. The owner is from Denmark, but has been living in Nuuk for thirty years—he had also recently been in Revelstoke for a snowmobiling trip, so we got along great from the beginning.
Karim and I settled into the hostel, went downtown to pick up some groceries, and spend the evening in, cooking and getting work done now that we were given unlimited Internet access—a rare treat for Greenland since all internet is provided via the mobile communications companies or satellite since there are no underwater cables to Greenland.
Welcome to West Greenland.
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