The Greenland adventure begins

Monday - Wednesday August 25-27

Getting to the west coast of Greenland required a few days of travel. We flew from JFK to Reykjavik overnight on August 25, arriving on the 26th. As with other flights to Western Europe, the combination of a short flight time and several changes of time zone makes it hard to feel rested when you land. 

Our solution to this European travel dilemma has always been to try to stay active and awake until an early bedtime in the new time zone. We stayed in a hotel built right next to the original (now domestic only) airport in Reykjavik; in fact the control tower is connected to one wing of the hotel!  We walked down to the seashore and then up through a cemetery to a woodland park. We saw some interesting birds in both environments, and the four mile walk helped us pass the time before an early dinner.  

On Wednesday morning we were due to fly to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Greenland has many air strips built for US bases during and after WWII. Nuuk itself has only had an international airport for about 18 months, and yesterday afternoon the Danish authorities declared that the security folks at the airport needed retraining. The word went out about 5pm local time that the airport was closed to international flights effective immediately.

This had many effects on the logistics for our trip! 

The easiest change was to reroute our charter flight from Reykjavik to land at the Kangerlussuaq airstrip instead. This airstrip is about 80 miles inland, at the end of a fjord, and slightly north of Nuuk. It was built in WWII and is considered the best airstrip in Greenland.  We took about an hour’s bus tour to experience the tundra and the landscape, including seeing some of a local musk ox herd.  The Kangerlussuaq fjord does not offer a deep harbor so the ship anchored out in mid-fjord. Our luggage was shipped from the airstrip to the ship by barge. We got to take our fist zodiac rides of the trip to get out to the ship. Adventure travel indeed! 

Our ship had completed its previous trip in Nuuk, with passengers expecting to fly out to Reykjavik early this morning. Instead, the ship had to travel (at full speed and a lot of unexpected fuel consumption) to get to Kangerlussauq by mid-day today. The passengers took our charter plane back to Reykjavik, several hours later than originally planned. The provisions for our trip also had to be rerouted. 

The most amazing story concerned passengers for our trip who had decided to fly directly to Nuuk rather than flying to Reykjavik and taking the charter. Their flight from Newark got as far as the Davis Strait when one of them noticed on the monitor that the plane was turning around.  The captain came on the speaker to say “I have been informed that the Nuuk airport is closed and I have been instructed to return to Newark. I’ve now told you everything I know about it.”   So at 6pm they were back in Newark scrambling to get a new flight to Reykjavik to catch up with us.

All in all it was an amazing recovery all around and we were all happy to be on the ship and underway. 

Pictured: Goldcrest on Reykjavik, Greenland ice sheet seen from our plane, Greenland ice sheet peeking out behind the landscape of Kangerlussauq, and part of a musk ox herd.