SUNDAY 16TH - WELCOME TO GREENLAND

Over night, we crossed the border between Canada and Greenland. We are now in the Greenland Arctic.

 

 

Once again the plan for the day changed as the day dawned to a foggy snowy day. The plan was to land on Littleton Island and do some exploring on land but the fog was too thick. Fog is a problem for landings because it means that the guides can't see sufficiently far to safely determine that there are no polar bears in the area.

So we moved on to our second intended destination, Etah. It is a place at the end of a fjord which was once a settlement and is still occasionally used for hunting groups. There are some abandoned buildings there.

The ship had to anchor at the entrance to the fjord and we explored it by zodiac. We started out in the fog and snow but the weather improved slightly while we were there so we able to safely land and go looking for the musk oxen which were grazing on the vegetation growing on the snowy terrain.

Once we got back on the ship and under way, we passed a very impressive iceberg.

An unusual evening in that our second expedition of the day took place after dinner. We landed at Siorapaluk the northern most community in the world! We had previously landed at the northern most community in Canada but this one in Greenland is further north.

It has a population of approximately 40 people and 200 dogs. They use sled dogs for transport in winter. This was a truly hunting and fishing community which obviously catches seals, walruses and Greenland sharks and, on the land, caribou, musk oxen and from the look of what they were wearing, the occasional polar bear.

 

 

The community is at the face of a very impressive glacier but there was no information as to its name, perhaps the Siorapaluk glacier.

We got to our northern most point today before turning south being 78 degrees north. There is very little between here and the North Pole. From now on, we head south exploring the west coast of Greenland.