on the American Continent

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Second flying day - this time according to plans that I made 6 weeks ago, and still the flying was perfect. Shows that it doesn't necessarilt take chaos in the planning to make things fit.

Left this morning Reykjavik in low ceiling - the tower of the catherdral was mostly obscured. But in 500 ft it was very sunny and visibility of 200 km - just Reykjavik was fogged in.

Crossing the Atlantik was no problem - DDN never noticed we were over water and flew nice as ever. The only difference was that I was wearing the survival suit - quite warm when the sun is shining into the cockpit. But never know whether it might be useful.

After 1 hour for flight, Iceland disappeared from view. But only shortly afterwards, the high mountains of Greenland became visible between cloud layers - looked like a fata morgana, but it was the real thing.

And getting closer, the low clouds below me vanished and lots of small icebergs were visible - in case of an emergency landing, I could not have hit the water. It turns out that the Eastern coast of Greenland has more ice in the water than usual, and in Kulusuk they have a problem to get any boat there - all supplies come by plane.

Getting closer to the coast, the landscape become more and more fascinating - I got beautiful pictures. The airport of Kulusuk is located just next to a mountain, and it was an impressive approach (I took about 20 pictures).

Kulusuk itself is a village of 325 inhabitants, some 10 km form the airport, and the next villages are about 30 to 40 km away - strange life, in particualr in winter, when no tourists arrive (in summer, there are about 3 airliners per day, but in winter its only about 3 per week).

I stayed a few hours, but then had to leaave to fly to the West coast - Destination Nuuk, the capital of Greenland (almost 16000 inhabitants). To get there, I had to cross Greenland in its complete width. The coast is very mountainous, but the interior is all snow covered and thus completely white - can't distinguish it from clouds above it, except that the clouds leave some shadows.

Later I got into some of these clouds and of course, started to get some ice on the wings. Got lower, ice stabilized and wasn't critical at all.

Then came the approach to Nuuk - this time with an high overcast, but below was good visibility, and the visual approach was again very spectacular. But after landing, low clouds came in and it started to drizzle - and any town looks awful in drizzle, and in particular does Nuuk. Its mostly houses from the 80ies, but lots of new constructin sites, dirty areas everywhere, and somehow quite different than expected. Not my favorite place (although I got very good food here).

Tomorrow I go either over to Canada (Froshiber Bay, now called Iqaluit), or flying North to 69degrees to see the icebergs in Ilulissat - the bar keeper here is from that town and recommended the midnight cruise around the icebergs. I'll see tomorrow when I get the latest weather...

Now there is a problem with the picture viewing in this blog site, it seems. I'm presently uploading all pictures into my Picasa site, which goes under my user name [e-mail]. I'm working here from a very expensive time limited internet connection (and its slow as well - the price to pay on the Northern end of the world, it seems). I'll try it myself when I have a good connection again - wherever that's going to be.

And another problem is the location indicated on the header of this blog - of course, Greenland is geographically North America, not Europe. But once a continent is entered, I can not change it anymore - so it stays Europe (as is the political association).

More tomorrow from either Greenland or Canada, but in any case far North.

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Photos

East-Greenland
near Kulusuk

Nuuk airpot and town
that is the largest town in Greenland