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Published: April 1st 2011
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Repeat after me...We are flying to Kangerlussuaq! I know, you are going to ask me Kanger what? Well, if you are here you already know we are speaking of Greenland.
But first I want to thank my friend Hugues for helping me to make this trip a reality. We have to thank few other people, but we will not name them here. Our last “boys” trip was exactly three years ago to Sydney. This time it would be less wine, and more cold weather.
Kangerlussuaq is the main airport hub of Greenland. There are currently only 2 international flights to Greenland. The first one is on a small Dash aircraft twice a week from Reykjavik, and the second one, actually the main one is from Copenhagen. Air Greenland has only one A330 and few little Dash, plus few helicopters to cover a huge country. The airbus 330 is used in the winter only on the Copenhagen route, 4 hours and half to Kangerlussuaq. For info, we were pretty impressed by the service on board...great food, good drinks! and if you want to come here, you either fly on Air Greenland, charter your own plane, or arrive by boat.
Kangerlussuaq is in the middle of nowhere. There is a small village surrounding the airport, and the place is actually 180km from the sea on the fringe of the icecap. So why did they put an airport here. Up to 1992, this place was a US Air Force base, given back to the people of Greenland few years ago. It is also the main runaway, and as it is way inland, seems to have more stable weather conditions. So nobody in Greenland really lives in Kangerlussuaq. The country has 55,000 inhabitants, 16,000 lives in the capital Nuuk, 5,000 in Sisimiut on the coast, and 4,500 up north in Ilulissat (coming later to that place two more entries).
Kangerlussuaq is the airport...and the center of the village/town is actually the airport too. The airport has a restaurant (cafetaria), a rather boring bar, a hotel, few shops and in front of the airport, you've got the supermarket, post office, and a pizza take-away place.
What does Greenland has in common with Maldives and Saudi Arabia? Simple, you cannot bring alcohol from outside the country, even if Greenland is clearly not a Muslim country. Alcohol revenues seem way too important for
the country to allow any duty free in. We found out about it at the duty free in Copenhagen.
Our first night was spent at the Polar Lodge. This is basically an improved youth hostel. The place was basically empty for our one night stay. Clean warm room, shared bathrooms, and a communal kitchen, and no staff in from 6pm.
We took our first lunch at the cafetaria of the airport...as there is not much choice around and the airport was only 100 meters from our lodge! Today on the menu, musk ox stew. First time I hate musk ox, delicious. We had twice during our week musk ox burgers in different places. I found out later on that there are no musk ox farms in Greenland...what you eat has been hunted down, and it seems like this for most of the meat you find around. For dinner, we went delivery with a take-away pizza...musk ox obviously one more time!
Greenland is not cheap, you would have guess about it before I wrote this. A beer in a bar/restaurant will cost you between 9 to 10usd...3usd in the local supermarket. Don't even try the wine, crazy prices
too. We ate pretty well during the all week, but it was in general big portions of simple and easy food. No gastronomy around here, except if you are ready for a huge bill. And guess what, the specialty of the country doesn't seem to be seafood restaurants, but rather Thai food....go figure why?!?
Next...how cold is the place, we were ready for everything, but did mainly encounter temperature ranging from -5 to -15 Celsius degrees...cold yes, bearable too.
Our first afternoon we had our first excursion. We drove the longest road in the country, 40km away from Kangerlussuaq starts the icecap. The icecap is huge, covering most of the country, well, don't know the %, but it looks like at least 90% of it. We passed by “the” golf course of Kangerlussuaq, the “forest” of Kangerlussuaq was next. They have attempted to plant few trees, and up to these days, around 40 pine trees are still standing fighting the permafrost.
We also saw few reindeers on the way as well as two foxes, one of them being a cute arctic fox...all white! Great sun all around, and the best is that our truck did get stuck
few times in the snow, allowing us to walk ahead of it for few kilometers...nice...
What we didn't see! Well, actually we saw a little of them, were the northern lights. It's late in the season, the sky is already too bright at night. We had only one clear day, our first one in Kangerlussuaq. Later on all evening were too cloudy to even think about seeing them. So on our first night we walked out of the “city” to see few white northern lights...yes, we didn't see the green and red ones...sad...a little, but hey, beside this we had a great time! Don't ask for pics, what we saw, none of our camera would actually be able to focus on it. So we saw something, wasn't great, but we saw it.
Greenland is also my 100th country visited. I know we can all argue on the way we count them...have you slept in Vatican or Liechtenstein? I didn't, but I visited the two places. So do not worry if my count is not a real one, I haven't finished to discover new places in 2011. For info, Antarctica is not a country even if I've been there...and
Greenland doesn't even have a seat at the UN (actually I'm not sure of that). The best part with traveling is that it is fun, and the planet is becoming smaller by the day...
I have two more entries for you. I took way too many pictures to keep it to a single entry, and we did visited few more places. Enjoy the pics, because for me, that was A trip!
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The Travel Camel
Shane Dallas
100 Countries/Territories
Congratulations, after much money, planning and dedication, you finally reached 100 - it is an achievement to the proud of!