Ilulissat’s Famous Icefjord Awaits

A dinner of Greenlandic food was consumed at 10 pm tonight. Fin whale, smoked salmon and halibut, raindeer slices (tender like beef), turnips, fried potatoes, white wine, (there has been lots of wine here) We flew in during a snowstorm to Ilulissat, a town of 4500 with 3000 sled dogs. Our guide owns 14 of these beasts, and in the road we saw two pups running about loose. “At six months they shoot them if they run like that,” she said. There is a lovely harbor here, and now in November boats still bob, docked up in the harbor. Our guide said winters were not the same as they used to be, for about the last five years. “It just gets really warm, and the winter doesn’t start as early any more.”

The Hotel Arctic is reported to be the best in the whole island. Not impressive, almost barracks like from the outside, inside is sleek and modern and very nice.

Greenland, a home-ruled province of Denmark, is huge–I saw a map of Europe with Greenland superimposed on top, it covered from Scandinavia down to Africa. The Hotel Arctic has modern conveniences and a view of the cold sea and massive icefjord. WiFi too. Tomorrow we will go boating and see the giant edge of the glacier sticking out of the ocean up close.

We flew just 45 minutes over ice, and the pilot asked a woman to raise her hand. No one at first raised theirs, then Berne did. He then called her up to join him in the cockpit. “Are you single?” he joked. She said that being up there was fun, they were joking in Danish and English and told a tale about a local who had what looked like three people sitting on a bench for just two, in a helicopter. He went to tell them they couldn’t let that third person sit there and then he noticed–it was a dead seal, all strapped in, ready to fly. He let them pass.