Ilulissat, meeting the Inuits and few icebergs...

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Our flight from Kangerlussuaq to Ilulissat took 45 minutes, but was three hours late. It actually seems normal to have flight delays here due to weather conditions, but we made it! We stay a total of 3 nights in Ilulissat. The city is the third biggest city by population in Greenland, with a total of 4,500 inhabitants, and 3,500 dogs!

We are way up north, but weather is actually a little warmer in Ilulissat than in Kangerlussuaq as we are right on the sea here. We are staying at the Icefiord Hotel. It is a cute little 3 stars place just on Disko Bay. Amazing views from our room, wow, I love to see those icebergs right out of our window.

The locals still call end of March winter, but the sun rise at 5am and set down at 7pm, which allow already for nice long days. Do be very careful, this summer, they are expecting 30 cruise ship in the little port city, with the biggest one having 2,500 passengers....I for sure don't want to be in town that day, even if it is a great economic boom for the local community!

We spent a lot of time walking around town. Had a great wild musk ox burger, but also a lot of Halibut. Here, the place is mainly a fishing port, but was not that easy to find fish...except halibut, everywhere!

We spent one afternoon on a small former fishing boat to sail the iceberg. These are way different than those I saw in Antarctica....they are also way wilder and taller. The tallest icebergs do reach 100 meters peaking out of the sea here, and go down to the sea bed at 250 meters...amazing! Slight problem, it's way colder out there on the sea in Disko Bay!

Few fun facts about Ilulissat...they have at least 5 supermarkets...that's a lot for 4,500 people! The inuits are not specially the friendlier people you will meet...fun to see the face of people when you tell the "hello" in the street...the faces ranged from ignoring us, to a big astonished faced...to a huge smile. Hugues is pretty good at catching interesting languages, and was able to speak few of the local lingo after few days, make us laugh a lot! The inuits are not really a bunch of talkative people, it may simply be because it's way too cold to open your mouth most of the time. But we had a great time with them, they may seems cold, but once they open, they are very welcoming people...you just have to make sure you do more than the first step! Hard work...very well rewarded!

No northern lights here at all....we had snow and clouds most evening, so didn't bother freezing out to try to find them!

This place is also the place where we launch for our 3 days, 2 nights camping and dogsledging inland.....but for this you have to wait little, I still have to upload a lot of pictures and few little movies...big adventure, coming soon!

I don't need to write a lot about Ilulissat, the pictures speak for themselves...and as always, reality was ten time better.

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Comments

[liliram]

brrrr........
Temperature "warmer", you say? Yay! How long did you stay in this place without freezing, peter?