Greenland
Kangerlussuaq (Sondre Stromfjord)
My route voyage started in Kangerlussuaq, where the most important international airport of Greenland is. After I arrived there, I put my tent onto the campground, which was just a few meters outside the airport terminal, next to the runway. The next day I woke up, because it became too hot in my tent! That day, the temperature reached about 25 C, and when I went to the local supermarket, the music inside was Wham’s ‘Club Tropicana.’ For a moment I had to convince myself that I was on the right island, and not on Ibiza or the Canaries. That same day I hiked to a mountain called Sugarloaf, and from the top of it you could see the inland-ice. The next day, I took the plane to Sissimiut.
Sisimiut (Holsteinborg)
Sisimiut is the 3rd largest town of Greenland, with 6000 inhabitants. It’s quite nice with red, green and blue colored homes. The tourist office was excellent and friendly. Sisimiut has a campsite, but near the lake near the heliport I spotted a couple of tents, so I put my tent there too and I had the greatest view out of my tent ever! But after a day or so I realized that this wasn’t the official campsite at all, but who cares…
The second day I hiked on the ‘Teleon’-Peninsula, which has a couple of archeological features like prehistoric graves and an old Dutch waling factory. The next day I went to the mountain ‘Kaellinghaetten’, and I should’ve had a great view if it wasn’t cloudy.. I also went to the town’s museum, which is small but nice. It was quite expensive, but I was the only one there that noon, so I can imagine why they can’t make it any cheaper. After a few days in Sisimiut I took the AUL-ferry Saqqit Ittuk to Ilulissat.
Ilulissat (Jakobshavn)
The ferry was great, while sitting in the warm and dry cafeteria you could watch the landscape pass by, take a hot shower or have a nice and warm bed… On the deck I saw a two or three whales, but the only problem was that they always appeared right in the instant that I went somewhere else to warm up, or the the other side of the ship. The Saqqit Ittuk goes to Ilulissat via Qasigianguit (Christianhab), and that means that I passes right along to mouth of the Ilulissat-icefjord! The larger ferries go directly from Ilulissat to Aasiaat (Egedesminde) and pass the icefjord at some distance. From this small ferry the icebergs where even more impressive. Imagine an Icecube 3 times as high as your ship, just a few meters away! This was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life! I you should go there some day, make sure you take a ferry that goes via Qasigianguit to Ilulissat!
I spend six days in Ilulissat. The first day I hiked to from the organized campsite to the icefjord, and then a marked route via a long-shaped lake back to the town. In Ilulissat there are 2 marked hiking trails, both start near the campsite, and one goes east along the fjord, and the other west. The campsite is a real luxury compared by the rest of Greenland. It has a kitchen-trailer, a hot shower (which is terribly expensive!) and toilets. Six days were a bit to long in Ilulissat, because the icefjord is the star-attraction, and if you’ve seen enough of that (after 3 days or so), there isn’t a lot more to do. A few museums in town, and a lot of too expensive (helicopter-)tours. It is possible to hike to Rodebay, just north of Ilulissat, but the 2 or 3 days I had left weren’t enough for that. So I just took some time to relax, while watching tons of ice floating by!
Back towards home
From Ilulissat I took the ferry Sarpik Ittuk back to Kangerlussuaq, via Aasiaat and Sisimiut. In Sisimiut the boat had to wait a couple of hours, so I used that time to have another look at that nice town, and to make myself a dinner. When I went back into the tourist office to buy a souvenir, they even recognized me again! That was I moment that felt really at home in that nice little town (eh, sorry city…) Just a few ferries a year go all the way trough to fjord to Kangelussuaq, but I had one which did this. The first 2 hours or so of the fjord a gorgeous! Steep peaks and glaciers everywhere next to the fjord. At Kangerlussuaq the harbor is to shallow for the ferries, so you get picked up by a landing barge.
Back in Kangerlussuaq I rented a bike and cycled the 25 kilometers to the inland ice and back again. There is a road that leads there, but the last 10 km are really bad with more sand than road. It was a bit like cycling Paris-Dakar, and I think I never felt that tired when I returned to my tent! On my way back I saw some musk ox which didn’t give me the impression that they liked me…
The next day it was raining and I preferred to spend most of the day in my tent. The last day I did a bit of hiking around town, to the ‘Black ridge’ and the Tacan-installation. That night I flew back to Copenhagen where I took the train back to the Netherlands.
Tags: Greenland vacation, Ilulissat pictures, Kangerlussuaq review, Sisimiut, traveling to greenland
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