Voyage of the Vikings Redux - Nanortalik, Greenland

Cruise Day 9

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Today we are in Natnortalik, Greenland, another of the ports we visited back in 2016 (link).  Nanortalik is the southernmost town in Greenland and has a population of about 1,200.  We were supposed to arrive around noon, but we arrived an hour early at 11:00 AM.  There were some icebergs around the ship, but not as many as we remembered from our last visit.

Paamiut, where we were yesterday, is the blue marker in the upper left and Nanortalik, where we are today, is the red marker in the lower right.  You can see how rugged this coastline is.

A detailed map of the Nanortalik area.  The lower black marker is where the ship is anchored and the green marker in the upper part of the map is where we went to see the icebergs.  As you can see, Nanortalik is actually on an island.

Val and I slept in and had a leisurely morning.  This is another tender port, and we had no intention of joining the mad rush to get off the ship right away.  As it has been for the last few days, it was foggy in the morning, but starting to clear by the time we arrived.

Sailing into Nanortalik.

 

Nanortalik in the distance.

We are anchored and getting ready to start the tenders.

The first tender heads to shore.

After a late lunch in the Neptune Lounge, we decided to get off the ship around 2:00 PM.  By this time, there was no line for the tenders, and we were able to get right on and made the short trip to shore.  We had a tour scheduled for 5:15 so we spent the next couple of hours walking around the town.  As in most of these small towns in Greenland, there isn’t much in the way of stores or restaurants.  We did see that there is now a small café in town that we saw was getting used by some of our fellow travelers.

The tender dock with the Zuiderdam in the background.

Val and I also found a small shop selling tourist items that we had visited before that was still there, so we went in and checked them out.  Val, thinking ahead to Christmas, bought a few stocking stuffers and I found a Greenland t-shirt to add to my collection.  From there, we walked on through town remembering some of the spots we had photographed before and recreating the same photos.

Nanortalik has an interesting outdoor museum that has many preserved old houses and buildings that show the history of living in this isolated community.  We decided to revisit this and enjoyed walking through it.  From there we headed back through town taking a roundabout “shortcut” that took longer than we expected, but we were able to see a part of Nanortalik off the beaten path.

There is an observation platform in the museum you can climb up and I took a couple of pictures from it of the surrounding area.  This is looking back into town.

This is looking down at some of the historic homes in the museum.

An example of one of the older dwellings in the area.  One of the locals said it was an example of a winter house.  The summer house was more like a hut than a house.

We took a different route back into the main part of town and saw some of Nanortalik we've never seen before.

 

 

Over the past year, Val’s family has been having Zoom gatherings they call the “Fam Jams” where they are exploring the family history and one was scheduled for today at 11:00 AM back home, but that is 4:00 PM here in Greenland.  We had wifi back on the ship, but Val was disappointed that she was going to miss it as we wouldn’t get back to the ship in time.  We had checked her cell phone when we arrived, but there was barely any cell service here.  She had given up any hope for the Fam Jam, but upon returning to the tender pier, she tried again and she had enough signal to use Zoom so she got to join in for 45 minutes of the Fam Jam while we waited for the start of our tour.

As it got close to our tour time, Val had to cut her meeting short, and we headed over to check in.  This tour is by boat, and it turns out we would have to walk all the way back through town to another dock to catch the boat.  It wasn’t that far, but the fact that we had already walked all the way down there and back and were tired of walking dulled our enthusiasm a bit.

Our tour today was a ship excursion called “Among the Icebergs” where we would get on a boat and get up close to the icebergs.  The last time we were here, there were no tours at all, and very few cruise ships ever came to this port so it looks like the tourist industry is starting to come into this area.

Since we didn’t see many icebergs sailing in, we didn’t have much hope for this to be very exciting, but it turned out to be wonderful.  There were about twelve of us on small a small boat owned by a local, but it was plenty big enough for all of us.  There was seating inside a cabin and also on the outside deck.  Val and I opted to sit in the front of the boat for the best views and while we had great views, it was a very cold spot to sit.  The captain told us that he was going to go at a fast pace until he got into the bay where the icebergs were and then he would slow down.  That was a long ten minutes as the wind blew very strong and very cold on us so we just hunkered down as best we could for those ten minutes.

Despite that, we were glad we chose to sit in the front as once we got close to the icebergs, we had the best seats.  Also, despite not seeing many icebergs right around the town, the bay we were brought to had quite a few and some were very big.  We spent the next 45 minutes slowly sailing around the bay getting up close and personal with the icebergs.  At one point, the captain asked us if we wanted to reach out and touch one of them and of course we said yes so he pulled the boat up to one and everyone got a chance to put their hands on some 2,000 year old ice.  Of course, it’s just ice, but somehow it was much more exciting to touch knowing that they had made their way down from the Arctic to this little bay.

We're almost to the area of the icebergs.

It was finally time to head back and the ten minutes of going fast was even colder going back than the coming in because we not only had wind from the speed of the boat, but the wind was also blowing towards us.  We had brought heavy coats and hats and were dressed warmly, but I thought my hands and face were going to get frostbitten.  Anyway, we survived and were soon back at the dock and walking back to the tender port.  We had low expectations for this tour, but we really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone.

On the boat ride back to Nanortalik we got a closeup view of the Zuiderdam.

Because it was after six, there was no line at all for the tenders and there were very few people on it for the ride back to the ship.  The fog had started to move back in, so we made it back to the ship just in time.  Val and I were both pretty chilled when we got back to the ship so we both took hot showers to warm up when we got back to our room.  This is a real contrast to our last cruise to Africa; on that cruise it was always hot and humid, and we couldn’t wait to get back to the ship’s air conditioning.

The rest of our evening was our usual routine and we called it a night around eleven.  Tomorrow we are cruising through the Prince Chrisitan Sound. We both agree it is one of the most pristine and beautiful places we have ever been to.