A pretty but isolated place

---

Geo: 60.7201, -46.0268

We were actually blessed with a sunny day as we cruised through the Prince Christian Sound in the south of Greenland. The scenery was dramatic and rocky with the odd iceberg floating by. The Captain took it slowly- we did not want a Titanic moment! Glaciers crept down to the sea and later in the afternoon there were beautiful mists hovering over the sea and the land.

The following morning we anchored off Qaqortoq , which is South Greenland's largest town. It is pronounced "kakortok “but as if you had something stuck in your throat. Before we came here I had not realised that Greenland belongs to Denmark. For some reason I expected to see locals who looked like Danes. To my surprise they were all Inuit looking with very round Mongolian type faces. The town has about 3000 inhabitants and all the towns are cut off from each other and only reachable by boat. I suspect a lot of in breeding! After a short tender to the shore we walked around and saw Greenland's oldest fountain in the small town square which is near to the market where normally fresh fish would be sold. The previous day a Minke whale had been caught so this was the main fare for sale along with Musk oxen. The market was composed of just a few wooden tables outside with the meat spread on it. The whale blubber is normally eaten raw and the man chopping up the whale was eating it as he chopped.

The houses were originally made from stone as there are no trees growing. Nowadays they import wood from Norway to build all the houses, schools etc. The houses are all painted in different colours to reflect the activity of the person, so the vicar and church buildings were red, the doctor's house yellow and the communications person, blue etc. We went into the old church, a small but very nice simple building with a boat suspended from the ceiling as is the practice round here as the main activity is seafaring and fishing. The new church was a rather ugly white block of a building meant to represent an iceberg. There were very few shops and only one bar so not much to do in this town which may explain the increasing population. As everything is imported the cost of basics was high. The only home grown stuff was potatoes and salad and some sheep and oxen. The daily diet is mostly fish and prawns, seal and whales.

We could not live in such a remote place but we were glad we had visited. It was good to get back to the ship particularly as we were celebrating our Ruby wedding anniversary so nothing to do now but party.

The ship set sail and headed back out into the open sea heading for Newfoundland. We are hoping for calm seas.

---

Comments

[paul]

you will enjoy NFL - and when you hear the natives talk, you'll think you're back in Cork! Belated Happy Anniversary - must celebrate in style in Montreal!

[Briony, David & Jen Thomas]

Just read through all the blogs and want to wish you a happy Ruby anniversary. Hope the storms are passed and the rest of the holiday is wonderful. We leave Thursday. Take care Bx

[Trish]

Happy anniversary will raise a glass to you bothxxxxxxx