Northern sea - Page 9

Kangerlussuaq

From midnight auroras were visible. Once again we were prepared by lecture for the favorable time of the year to see this beautiful celestial phenomenon. And if it is still cloudless in the darkness, one has luck. However, I am at nighttime with Paul in the cabin, only photos of it we saw the next day.

Today we anchored in Kangerlussuaq at the end of a 170 km long fjord, all night we had been sailing through there. The harbor was built in 1941 by the US military together with the airport of Kangerlussuq, which is 13 km further inland. We had to tender along a narrow channel. There is no town here. The reason for our landing were excursions to the second-largest ice mass in the world - the Greenland Ice Sheet. But I didn't want to do that to Paul, a 2 hour bus trip, so we climbed around on the rocky beach and collected stones. Excursionists would have seen musk oxen and arctic foxes along the way. The afternoon belonged again to the swimming pool and Paul played with Wolfgang, with whom he got along super. In the evening we went the beautiful fjord back to the sea towards Nuuk, where Santa Claus lives 🙂

Nuuk

Today our destination was Nuuk, the smallest capital in Europe, but with 16,000 inhabitants the largest city in Greenland, an early Viking settlement. Since Santa Claus supposedly lives here, you could drop off Christmas mail on board or in town, which would then be delivered shortly before Christmas. I thought he lives at the North Pole ?!? There were no interesting excursions here, we explored everything on foot. On the way we walked among other things over the fish market, the livelihood here. In addition to seal and whale meat but also seagulls lay out for sale. Well, as I learned later, this is even a treat on the Faroe Islands. Also a ridiculous appearance of a guest from the ship, who wanted to force Paul to come down from a statue, so that he can photograph this, could us the colorful city in wonderful situation not spoil.

In the evening we saw the MS Vega Sagittarius, a relatively new container ship with a crew of 17, at the exit of the fjord. It had run aground a few days earlier and sprung a leak. It was to be salvaged at the next spring tide.