August 27 Ilussisat

 Today we revisited (we were here in 2022) Ilulissat which in Greenlandic means ‘icebergs’; it is known as the ‘birthplace of icebergs’. The massive glacier there, Sermeq Kujalleq, is the most productive glacier not only in Greenland but in the entire Northern Hemisphere they say. It produces 20 million tonnes of ice each day flowing at a rate of 40m per day hurling city-block sized icebergs into the sea. Glaciologists suspect that is was this glacier that calved the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912. 

Its a popular place - two other ships were already there.

L: Passengers loading into zodiacs 3 decks below. R: kayaks being towed out for the kayakers.

The kayakers huddled together to climb into their paddling gear and the rest of us divided into two groups – one lot boarded a couple local boats to approach the glacier from the water and the other group were ferried into port to wander the town, visit museums and to walk alongside the glacier. We were the first group and the boat’s captain took us as close to the mammoth glacier as considered safe – which wasn’t close enough for my liking.

A little local boat heading for the ice packed fjord

It was a glorious day, sunny, still and quiet but for the cracking of ice and crackling of bubbles popping in the little ‘bergy bits’ floating around us. We tootled through humongous building-size ice blocks. 

Clouds sky ice and light all came together to produce unusual effects. Here is a selection of my perspective of some of the iceberg - one went a little crazy!

Bottom left you can see the town between these two monsters.

After lunch zodiacs took our group, or anyone else who wanted, into port. where we either wandered or took the boardwalk alongside the glacier and/or visited the Ice Museum. It is excellent! It’s designed to fit into the landscape and for a large building it blends quite well. And you can walk up into the roof. Inside the displays were intriguing with small artefacts and local object encased within a clear ice-like capsules.

Lindsay walked onto the roof last year but the museum wasn't opened

We had limited time to walk the boardwalk over the tundra alongside the glacier but it is such a stunning place so we took a hike out there for about an hour. Not surprisingly I photographed lots of plants from the boardwalk – you are not allowed to step on the fragile tundra so my pix weren’t great.  But I managed to get close enough to identify 16 different species in that hour or so. The land looks a little inhospitable so it’s hard to imagine the hidden beauty in this environment - you need to look closely (I spent a lot of time squatting!).  The whole place is quite stunning. The fjord was packed with icebergs unable to reach the sea because large ones blocked the way

The board walk goes for many kms tracking the glacier

To me the tundra is beautiful

An Arctic willow - they grow no higher than 20cm high

Extraordinary look across at this huge river of ice

On our way back to the ship someone spotted a big flock of birds hovering in the distance and that means fish/food and that means sea mammals. So we went in search and found a few Humpback whales feeding. Such magnificent beasts. I got some shots of the fluke of one as it dived and uploaded that to the HappyWhale site (follow this link). One of the ways whales are identified is by the markings on their flukes, like a fingerprint they are all different. This one has been seen a number of places - it quite exiting to get reports about where your whale has been seen.