A day outdoors

 September 14

We awoke to a sunny balmy day (3 Celsius) with very little wind. The ship pulled into a channel between the island of Upernivik and the mainland at Qiioqi. We took a two hour zodiac ride amidst beautiful icebergs and towering mountains. Mid ride, we stopped at a zodiac manned by the ship’s hotel manager and some of his staff dressed in polar bear costumes, for a cup of hot chocolate with Baileys.

The sheer scale of the cliffs and icebergs was hard to grasp until we saw the ship next to them. Each iceberg had its own unique beauty, and moving around to the back of each revealed additional features. The deep blue “cracks” are actually places where the ice has melted and refrozen. The refrozen ice is denser than the original glacier/ice cap ice. The original ice scatters the light and looks white, while the denser ice shows as blue. 

The patterns in the metamorphic rock (Greenland is comprised mostly of metamorphic rock) were stunning. The fjord was so calm that photographs of the reflections look like the cliff itself, just upside down. The layered colors of the cliffs became amazing artworks when wakes from the zodiacs interrupted the reflections in the water. 

During lunch the ship repositioned to the Kangerdlugssuaq fjord “next door” and we went hiking on the tundra. The ground underfoot had dense vegetation and a spongy feel.  There were more dwarf trees (the dwarf birch are a brilliant orange-red) and mosses than on prior walks, in addition to the rich variety of lichens and low-growing berries.  We were delighted when three rock ptarmigan flushed out of the vegetation and perched on a rocky ridge to be photographed. 

And because we just loved the picture, here is an iceberg that looks like Gandalf the Grey looking west…. 

Pictured: rock ptarmigan, colorful tundra, old sod-roofed hunting cabin, our ship dwarfed by icebergs and cliffs (with overnight ice in the foreground), the requisite gorgeous iceberg in the landscape, an example of a blue iceberg crack, wake driven reflection, Gandalf