Blogs from Ilulissat, West Greenland, Greenland, North America

North of the 69th parallel – Ice Camp Eqi & Ilulissat We’ve experienced a mere glimpse of Iceland and yet Greenland beckons. Our research has indicated that while you can reach Greenland by boat or air, you must travel from Copenhagen or Reykjavik, and only on certain days. It’s not like folks wake up one morning and say, “ I think we should pop over to Greenland for the weekend. What do you think?” This is a land of only about 55,000 inhabitants and let’s face it, unless you like your holiday rather chilly you are left with a small window of time to visit this most unique spot. Subsequently, there are limited people heading to Greenland so flights are not available every day. We needed to interrupt our time in Iceland to catch a flight ... read more

An unexpected surprise today. Originally we had a nine hour boat trip planned to Eqi glacier. A different glacier 100km or so north of Ilulissat. The front of the glacier in Ilulissat is invisible on account of all the icebergs in front of it. Eqi calves into an open bay so the face of the glacier is visible. Unfortunately the boat had broken down the previous day, stranding that day’s passengers so nine hours of boat ride were avoided and swapped with a Sikorsky helicopter ride to the same glacier. The inside of the helicopter was like an airplane and except for the noise it was remarkably smooth and steady. Eqi is truly remote. (There are no roads between towns in Greenland.) This trip wasn’t on the tourist menu (but it should be). 25 minute flight ... read more

We went on a boat. It was late. I played on my Ipod and slept. It was fun. I went on a helicopter that was little. I sat in the front. It was cool. We went to a fish factory. We put on funny clothes. We saw lots of shrimp. It was cool - Sofia Journal Entry Aug 6-7 So many pictures and cool stuff we did in those 4 days in Ilulissat that I had to make 2 blogs about it. We saw part of a soccer game. It was a championship game. We did not need tickets, we just sat down and watched. The field was dirt, not grass. I liked watching. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ That night, we went on an "evening iceberg" tour. The boat left really late, about 900pm. The sun was still up. ... read more

This is my final entry on Greenland, and we have kept the best for the end. The aim of this trip was to go dogsledging in Greenland, an adventure in itself. Ilulissat have 4,500 inhabitants, and 3,500 dogs, most of them, if not all of them are linked to dogsledging. Walk around Ilulissat little town, and you see dogs everywhere, some have a leash, some are rooming freely in the street. For this expedition, we chosed the 3 days, 2 nights trip. That was Hugues and I, our two greenlandic guides, and a total of 32 dogs for our 2 sledges. You can do 2 hours, 3 hours, 5 hours, 2 days, 3 days, 4 and 10 days trip. 4 days would have been great, but a little over our budget...Greenland is not a cheap place! ... read more