Perhaps, ice, halibut, sled dogs, boat rides, cold days? One thing I was sure about was that I was going to see some icebergs** and glaciers – indeed I did. Didn’t really know what else to expect, really.

Whenever I have the opportunity to go someplace new, I always want to interact with the locals and learn more about them more than anything.  Maybe it is nosiness (yes I’m nosy… but prefer to call it curious). But for some reason here in Greenland, I just didn’t feel the need to do so. Maybe because that activity is self-explanatory and my sub-consciousness understood that before I even tried to get into it. I guess that having your home located 69 degrees north the equator just makes you a bit conservative and distant, but at the same time interesting enough to have people from all over the world come and visit you. While overlooking the sun setting on the horizon of the partially frozen Atlantic, we were discussing what interested us most about coming to Greenland – for me it was the remoteness of the place. The scenery is just beautiful, and open.

No obstruction, no trees, no mountains, just low vegetation and a contrast of
colors (fall colors) which blend with the solid rock that works as the base, for housing and walking trails.

Our new operator friends in the area took us around for a few days – evening boat rides, local community visits, and an overnight at an ice camp. To be more specific, the Eqi Ice Camp, located 5 hours by boat from Ilulissat. Eqi Glacier is more than 3.4 km wide and the average height from the bed to the top is about 200 meters, of which 30 to 80 meters are above the water’s surface. The views from the very comfortable and well-equipped ‘huts’ are unreal. When the glacier is calving, that powerful noise and performance just makes you stop whatever you are doing. In fact, the last morning while we here hiking around by ourselves (and when I say by ourselves, I mean nobody else around for miles and miles, except the other guests back at the camp) that glacier was so active and noisy that I was stopping every 5 minutes trying to convince myself that the thing wasn’t coming down completely. I guess it is its natural cycle, but definitely it seems that man is hurrying the process more than needed. As I took my last breathtaking views of such a giant piece of ice, I felt overwhelmed with happiness thinking that when I was a kid, playing around barefoot with my sisters in our muddy backyard, we took our dolls on imaginary trips to the land where there was just snow and big chunks of ice, but never pictured ourselves going there. And here I was sitting on top of a huge rock looking at that big chunk of ice. Then sadness came, as I wished everybody could have the opportunity to sit right here and see the beauty of the glacier, and understand that we have to take better care of our natural resources (sigh).

** English is not my first language, but I have managed to learn it. Although, this doesn’t mean that I still don’t make mistakes. And it seems that my family really enjoys when I create my own pronunciation for some words, especially when I come up with new words in English. As we were exploring one of the trails, I said “Husband – I really liked seeing all of those iceburgers” and that was enough to have him describe to me more than an hour his different versions of what he thought an iceburger would look like. Laughs took over the sounds of the ice calving.

Now, I’ll let you create your own version of an iceburger…

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