Voyage of the Vikings Cruise - Cruise Day 29 - Cruising Prince Christian Sund

We are returning to Greenland and we are doing it the same way we left, cruising Prince Christian Sund.  Since we had already been through it in near perfect weather, I thought that we probably wouldn’t spend much time outside and wouldn’t take many pictures, but I was completely wrong!

We had gained an hour for the second day in a row so we woke up early and wide awake.  Since we would be entering the sound around 8:00 we got dressed and got our breakfast before 8:00 and were out on deck for the entry.  When we woke up I thought we wouldn’t even enter the sound as it was very foggy, but just as when we left, the fog lifted right at the entrance.  It was in the low 40's out on deck so we bundled up as warm as we could.

The entrance was fogged in, but once again, cleared as we entered the sound.

The sky was blue, but there were wispy shrouds and layers of low fog along the way, which actually made it a little more interesting.  It was very cold all morning, but Val and I stayed on deck until 1:00 taking many more pictures than intended.  

It was a very cold morning.

We both stayed bundled up.

This iceberg broke apart while we were watching, the half on the left is in the process of rolling over.

Each half floated on its own separate way.

 

 

We were getting hungry and we entered some thicker fog so we decided to have some lunch – big mistake.  The heavy fog was short lived and while we were eating we passed the only village in the entire sound.  I was very disappointed as it was something I wanted to see and photograph, but I guess we had to eat sometime.  We quickly ate and went back on deck where it seemed a little warmer, but as soon as the breeze came up it got very cold again.   

We didn't see nearly as many icebergs as we did on our first trip through.

 

Intrepid photographers

A small fishing boat from the only village in the sound.

We stayed on deck until just before 3:00 when we sailed out of the sound and back into the ocean and fog bank.  I thought since we had seen this once, we really wouldn’t be interested in seeing it again, but that was totally wrong.  This is one of the most beautiful and remote places I have ever seen and feel very lucky that we were able to see it not only once, but twice.  They said this is one of the most beautiful scenic cruises in the world and I saw nothing to dispute that.

Back into the fog as we leave Prince Christian Sund.

We did see some icebergs on the way out.

 

As the ship left the sound, we went back to the room to warm up as we were chilled from our day in the cold.  Thank goodness we had brought our heavy coats, hats and gloves with us for this trip.  I spent the rest of the afternoon downloading our picture, but we did keep our eyes on the window and saw several icebergs.  Despite the fact that we had left the sound, we weren’t exactly in the open sea as there were many small barren rock islands that we passed by as well as the icebergs.  Although it has only been a couple of weeks since we were here before, we saw a lot less ice this time than before so I guess conditions change pretty quickly.  We found out later that we were actually traveling in another sound as the “ice pilots” who were on board to guide the ship through any ice that we encountered had decided there was too much ice to head directly to the open sea.

This is a map distributed by the ship's locations guide, Barbara, of our route through Prince Christian Sund at the southern tip of Greenland.

One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog post was that we received certificates for crossing the Arctic Circle.  We had wondered why nothing was said, but they did do something.

Here is my certificate for crossing into the Artic Circle, Val also got one.

Val and I had trouble getting warm again, but I took a hot shower before dinner which did the trick for me.  We went to the MIX before dinner and our trivia team did very well tonight.  It was a contested finish as one of our answers was deemed wrong so we missed getting a perfect score by one point and another team won.  After everything was done, the Assistant Cruise Director, Jan, who leads the trivia Googled our answer and found that we were indeed correct and should have been a winner.  Trivia gets a little competitive.

We left for dinner and as we walked into the dining room we could see a large iceberg lit by a ray of sun.  Naturally I didn’t have a camera so I tried to take some pictures through the window with my cell phone.  It was quite a spectacular sight and we were lucky we had such a great table for the cruise to see it from.  

Cell phone picture through the window.

We enjoyed a great view as we ate dinner with Ken and Mary Beth (another cell phone picture).

 After dinner it was on to the casino where we did poorly again so we called it a night and headed back to the room.  Tomorrow we will be in Nanortalik, Greenland, which will be our last stop before heading west and back to Canada.