Day 7 - Welcome to Greenland, country #73 for us!

So, lets get this out of the way first... is Greenland a country?

Well, there are arguments for both sides of that question. The United Nations officially has 193 countries in it. However there are other countries that are not officially recognized as countries by the other countries. Examples are Kosovo, Taiwan, Western Sahara, Transnistria, Somaliland, Northern Cyprus, and Greenland. Among others. If you add these all up, it comes to 215 countries.

For our purposes, Greenland is a country! So, with that out of the way, welcome to Greenland...

We arrived in the town of Nanortalik at 7:00am Wednesday morning. They were very quick at getting the tender departures ready. We had gotten up at 6:30am, had a quick breakfast in the buffet area, then went and picked up our tender departure tickets. But quite a few others were there before us. We got departure group number 18! For perspective, there were about 65 departure groups for the entire day.

Each tender holds about 100 people. And there were four boats. There are about 3,200 people on board, and we heard later that 95% of them made the trip to shore.

Scenery as we approached Nanortalik.

Icebergs!

Sunrise as we approached Nanortalik.

Greenland.

View from the bow.

We had wanted to get to shore fairly early. But group 18 meant that it would be a while. You're supposed to wait in any of the public seating areas until they announce your number, but we went and hung out near the boarding area and asked one of the staff there that if they had room for two extras we would be happy to fill the spots. Sure enough, the girl came and found us and we managed to get on with group 11. 

The town of Nanortalik (pop 1,050).

Nanortalik.

The bridge crew hard at work.

Icebergs!

We got off the tender at Nanortalik at 8:26am. Not bad, considering the number of people who wanted to get off. Not as early as we had hoped, but still not bad.

That's a long word!

The first two lines are in Greenlandic.

The second two lines are in Danish.

Greenland is "owned" by Denmark. And there are two official languages in Greenland... Greenlandic, which is the native language of the ethnic Inuit people who live there. And Danish. Very few people speak English.

The harbor.

Typical housing.

Nanortalik is situated in a very scenic area.

We had a hike planned, so we carried on through town to do the hike first, and then see the town later.

The police station.

Greenland license plate.

We are headed up there!

The town cemetery.

Me, on the trail. temperature was about 7C (45F).

But, due to the cool temperature, there were no bugs.

Looking back at the town.

This boulder looked ready to roll down the hill.

Looking back at the town site with the Emerald Princess.

Icebergs in the distance.

Wow!

You can see a tiny boat approaching the lower iceberg from the right.

The port tours are ridiculously expensive. For example, it was $160 USD ($220 CAD) to get into a boat for one hour tour to see the icebergs up close. There was a walking tour of the town that cost $110 USD ($151 CAD). Amazing. 

We'll stick with the free hiking!

Fantastic!

There are a lot of icebergs.

These mountains reminded us of Tombstone Territorial Park in Yukon, Canada.

Ruth, enjoying the view.

We met one other hiker near the top.

Looking in another direction.

Budget cruising tip... bring some sealable containers with you and take some food from the breakfast buffet to have for lunch during port days. We bought these at Poundland in Falmouth.

Looking back at town.

Coming back down.

Houses in town.

A golden mushroom.

Iceberg very close to shore.

Looking across to part of the town.

We had been up there.

Residential street in town.

Polar bear skin drying!

The majority of the people in Nanortalik are native Inuit people. We saw very few Danish. Many still live off of hunting and fishing. Polar bears do come into the region, although Nanortalik is at the southern tip of the range. They usually arrive on sea ice in the spring, and there are several sightings annually. The last one to be seen in town was in 2015.

Just relaxing.

When we walked back to the port area, we couldn't help but notice the lineup to get back on the tenders and return to the ship.

Yikes. And it was only 12:30pm.

I couldn't figure out why people were heading back to the ship so early. I mean, how many times do you come to Greenland? But we overheard people saying "well, there's not much to see here". Okay. Sure makes you wonder why they came.

But, the lineups were concerning. I hate standing in line, and it's one of the reasons we haven't done a cruise before. The problem was that the docking area only had room for one tender at a time. And getting 100 people off the boat and 100 people back on it took a lot of time, especially with many people not healthy enough to do it in a reasonable amount of time.

So we carried on exploring, hoping the lineup would be shorter later. That was not to be.

We went in the local fishmonger.

Harbor porpoise, minke whale, and whale skin.

Then we went and checked out the main grocery store.

35.95 Danish Krone is $7.70 CAD or $5.60 USD for a head of lettuce.

Same price for a canteloupe.

Same price for 250 ml of real Canadian maple syrup!

The store was amazingly well stocked!

Mural in town.

We walked up to the town church.

Inside the church.

The church is really pretty.

Yikes. The lineup is even longer.

We spoke to people who were saying it was a two hour wait. We would go for another walk, come back and the lineup was even longer. Crap. Fortunately, we were in no rush to get back on the ship.

Funny picture of the ship on land.

One more walk past the hordes.

So, we decided to go to the local cafe and have a couple of hot drinks. I changed my mind when I saw the local Greenlandic beers on the counter. I mean seriously, how often would you have the chance to have a Greenlandic made beer while in Greenland??

What a great label for a Greenlandic beer!

The bill for a beer and a coffee was 70 krone ($15 CAD, $11 USD), but I don't remember the breakdown between the two. And yes, the beer was really nice! 

I look like I've already had a few!

We resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to wait in line, and went and did exactly that. Back on the ship by 6:00pm, which was an hour later than the last tender was supposed to leave. I don't blame the ship or the cruise line... it was simply due to the number of people who wanted to go ashore and the fact there was only room for one tender at a time. I bet many of those people would not have gone ashore if they knew there was going to be such a long wait to get back. Fortunately, our next stop at Qaqatorq was much better.