Greenland Travelog: Tinit
Day 3. June 5th, 2016.
Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland.
We woke up the next morning just before nine and began to casually gather our gear and supplies, clean up the cabin and prepare a quick lunch all while listening to some music on my laptop. The last chore we had to do before leaving was to switch out the plastic bag from the toilet.
Since there is no plumbing in the settlements, the toilets each have these biodegradable (hopefully?) black plastic bags that you tie off and place on the side of the pathway for collection. It sounds simple enough, not exactly a pleasant chore mind you, but not the worst thing either.
Unfortunately for me, our plastic shit and piss bag had somehow sprung a leak, which I realized only after lifting it out of the toilet. Attempting to dodge the outpour of brackish urine gushing from the hole in the bottom of the bag, I launched it out the doorway and onto the porch.
I wish I could say I stayed clean, but I did not. My clothing stayed clean though, but my hands definitely got wet. That was horrifying.
Feeling disgusted with myself and still mentally and physically recovering from the parasite incident in Russia, I was not about to take any more risks.
Granted, I was thinking that thought while dripping with piss liquid that had been stewing in a couple of days worth of shit. I tied off the bag as quickly as I could, rushed back into the house and proceeded to wash my hands as if I were a surgeon preparing to enter the operating room.
Once finished, I repeated the process again and then once finished for the second time, I applied a satisfying amount of hand sanitizer across my fingers and hands. While not fully mentally ready to accept what had happened, I was at least physically okay with it.
Let’s move on.
We took a little speedboat from Kuummuit to a tiny settlement called Tiniteqilaaq (or Tinit for short), located about an hour and a half away. On the walk down to the harbour, a bunch of the children from the past two days waved goodbye to us. The ride to Tinit went by quickly, as we sped past deep azure icebergs on our way up into the fjords.
Tinit is a small settlement, smaller than Kuummuit, and it somewhat feels abandoned, as many of the homes once occupied now sit empty, with windows boarded up. However, Tinit is located in one of the most dramatically beautiful places in the world, just alongside a massive icefjord covered in icebergs that have broken off from the glacier just above us.
Many of the icebergs we’ve been seeing originated from here and it shows. The fjord is impressive and I spent hours today watching it—listening to the rumbling sounds of cracks and breaks, as massive chunks of ice slide off large icebergs and form smaller icebergs, splashing down into the sea below.
We have no plan here in Tinit and are not getting picked up for another two days, so we spend the afternoon wandering around. We met an old man who agreed to take us seal hunting by boat up the icefjord tomorrow morning and I’m really hoping that pans out.
Much like other settlements, there is a very popular trampoline in the middle of town and many of the little girls love hanging out there, taking turns jumping three at a time, with the ice floe in the near distance. We showed them the drone as it flew over the incredible icebergs, revealing secret turquoise lakes on the tops of the largest icebergs as the water melts forming these exquisite pools only visible from above.
I took a short hike up to the top of the settlement, which provided an excellent birds’ eye view over the icefjord and gave me a little bit of time to reflect alone, which was a nice feeling. Since today is Sunday and Tinit is tiny, the local Pilersuisoq is closed until tomorrow morning and the shower house is also closed until 8 am tomorrow.
I’ll have to dig into my supply of cashews and protein bars for tonight’s dinner since we ran out of the smoked minke whale (which tastes like beef and fish had a love child and then that love child was salted and put in a smoker for a while; I’m not going to lie, it was pretty good) and grilled trout Lars gave us earlier. Peace out until tomorrow’s adventure.
Day 4. June 6th, 2016.
Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland.
We woke up this morning to a knock on the door at about half-past nine. It was the old man we had met yesterday who agreed to take us out onto the icefjord in his boat. He knew a few English words, so I asked him for fifteen minutes and he motioned for us to meet him at the harbour. We got dressed, packed up our camera gear for the day and walked over to the harbour, stopping at the Pilersuisoq on the way to pick up some bread and dried dates.
Being amongst the icebergs was an incredible feeling that I cannot use words to describe. The immense size of some of them was incredible, and every few minutes you could hear cracks and breaks followed by a massive splash across the fjord as pieces big and small broke from the larger icebergs. The old man was very patient with us as we pointed out large icebergs we wished to see and he would navigate the boat over there.
One of the larger icebergs had formed an ice cave through the middle, as the sun hit the top a deep, aqua blue colour permeated throughout the inside of the cave. While it was far too dangerous to actually take the bat inside the cave, as car-sized chunks of ice were falling from it every ten minutes or so we did pull up pretty close and were able to take the drone inside as well as photograph it.
We continued on to more icebergs, one was so smooth and rounded; it reflected so perfectly onto the calm sea below that it looked like we were floating past an exhibit in a modern art museum. It was impressive for us to need to take three spins around it, but none were as good as the first time when the seawater was perfectly still.
The old man found a flat iceberg, and it’s only when you approach an iceberg and can see how deep they go under the sea that they become truly impressive. This particular flat iceberg, while only a couple of feet above sea level, was massive, stretching far below where the eye can see underwater. He pulled out an anchor from the front of the boat and cast it onto the iceberg. With a cup raised, he motioned for us to get off the boat and step onto the iceberg to collect fresh water from the aqua pools that had formed in the middle.
We ended up spending the better part of an hour on that one iceberg, dipping our hands into its fresh pools stocked with water that had been trapped in ancient glaciers from Greenland’s massive icecap, wandering around every bit of its surface as long as the ice below was solid enough to stand on, photographing its freshwater pools as they slowly drained out into the sea; the water around the mouth of the freshwater stream formed on top of the glacier was cloudy as the fresh and salt waters mixed together.
It was a strange feeling, being on an iceberg for the first time, and it was only when some larger waves would hit the side of the iceberg and we would begin to gently rock back and forth that I was reminded that we were in fact standing on an iceberg.
We returned to Tinit in the afternoon and prepared a simple lunch back at home (read: frozen pizza). As we were finishing up the clouds began to clear and the sun started to beam down onto the icebergs. We spent the rest of the day, all the way until 2 am, save for a small dinner break, outside chasing the sun with our cameras.
Due to our high geographical position, the sun took a very long time to set down behind the mountains that form the edge of the fjord (which happened just past 11 pm). Without a cloud in the sky, coupled with low tide, we were able to walk around the icefjord’s rocky shoreline, photographing the icebergs and the settlement as it bathed in sunset lighting.
Some of the icebergs were washed ashore due to the tide and I was able to see all the intricacies of what was lying beneath the surface of the water while they were beached.
In the late evening, as the sun passed below the mountain peaks, the other side of the settlement was showered in soft, pinkish light. We hiked back up the hill overlooking the village and photographed everything we could see, trying our best to avoid including the heaps of garbage scattered about the town and the unattractive water tower protruding from the middle of the settlement.
We continued hiking around looking for the best angles until some of the untied dogs took too strong an interest in us and we headed back into the settlement for safety. By this point it was already past 2 am and we decided to call it a night as the light began to intensify again.
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