6/16/17, “Fog, Fog, Fog”Ilulissat, Greenland, Kingdom of Denmark
Well, it seems that the weather
did not want to cooperate, so, while I am looking due north at solar midnight,
and the sun is above the horizon, I am not seeing the midnight sun, per
se. Instead I am seeing dense fog and a
blur of white. It is still as bright as
day, but I have been seeing brightness 24 hours a day all trip. I wanted to see the midnight sun, but I have
been thwarted. Alas, Nordkapp and
Longyearbyen will be visited one day. Until
then, this white fog will have to suffice.
Today promises to be a day of adventure as I begin my return journey. Seeing as I published last night’s entry just
an hour ago, I do not have much to report, but I would be remiss not right this
entry.
After I closed, I published and
posted my photos, which took longer than expected, I headed out a little
after 1 AM. There was a dense fog, as I
mentioned above, and I almost didn’t go, but I couldn’t not go. I should have stayed in my room. I walked up the road a bit, looking for a
spot where I could get a good, unobstructed north-facing view, not that it
mattered with this fog.
I found a gravel
road that looked promising, but it seemed to be some kind of Inuit village, and
I did not feel safe walking into in the dead of night with this dense fog. For one of the few times in all of my
travels, my danger sense overrode my adventure sense, and I turned around. I instead found a nice hill that afforded a
good north-facing view, figured out which was way due north, and waited for
solar midnight.
Then, exactly at 1:24
AM, I lit up an Opus and took my ceremonial picture at solar midnight. It was entirely underwhelming. I then sat down, still facing north, and
proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can head back
to my hotel.
Reader, remember that fog from
this morning? Well, um, it’s still here,
and airplanes have trouble landing in the fog.
I am not sure if I will be able to get to Nuuk tonight. There are alternate flight paths tomorrow
that would get me to Reykjavik, but I am not sure how viable those are. I really just want to get to Nuuk
tonight. I have been stressing out over
this all day, but there is nothing that can be done. I just have to wait until I get to the
airport and hope that the plane gets here from Kangerlussuaq.
While I would enjoy spending some more time
walking around Nuuk, it’s not strictly necessary. I just want to make my flight on Sunday. If I don’t get to spend any more time in
Nuuk, I’ll be fine with that, though I would very much enjoy to have another
night there instead of here. Besides,
this fog looks quite persistent, and the sooner I am away from it, the
better. There is nothing to do here in
this weather, and even my hike this afternoon was less than ideal due to the
weather.
After I closed this morning, I
walked back to the hotel, finished my cigar, and passed out. I woke up around 9
AM, getting four REM cycles, but I got them individually, as I slept
fitfully. I then headed to
breakfast. They had the usual assortment
of cold spreads, but they also had some hot food, including a waffle iron. The smell brought me back to mornings in
Kristiansund from a lifetime ago. I
helped myself to a plate of cold food, and then followed it up with a plate of
hot food.
The waffles were every bit as
good as they were when I first went to Norway.
Meanwhile, I was obsessively checking the flight schedules as flights
got cancelled and planes turned around.
I realized that I would not really have any kind of update until 3
PM. My flight was scheduled for 5:20 PM,
but it wound up getting pushed back to 5:55 PM.
If that holds I would be thrilled.
I packed and got ready before heading out.
I left my luggage and suit at the hotel, and
the shuttle took us to the trailhead. I
took a different trail than I did last time, this one through rocks and fields
to the cliff. I had a serious “Breath of
the Wild” moment and thought how well Link would have done on that trail. I lit up a Montecristo Open Eagle for the
walk, and I was soon at the cliff. I had
eaten way too much for breakfast, and I was entirely lethargic at this
point.
I sat down on a rock and enjoyed
the vista, but it was quite some time before I could get up again. I then proceeded to walk the entire distance
from the cliff back to my hotel. It was
only three miles, and I walked it slowly and in stages. First I got back to the trailhead, and then I
continued to the town center, where I found a few souvenir shops.
I got some things, and I was going to wait
for the shuttle to take me back to the hotel.
The shuttle was not scheduled for another 20 minutes, and I calculated
that I could walk back to the hotel quicker than that. I did exactly that. As I walked along a rocky ravine, unable to
cross over it, I thought of Link and his paraglider, and how easily he would
have glided across. I thought of
Revali’s Gale and stamina sprints. I had
no such abilities, so I continued to walk alongside the road. [Author's note: In case my reader is not familiar with these "Breath of the Wild" references, it is from the latest Zelda game, which I have been playing for the past two months.]
When I got to the hotel, I checked on the
flight updates, and not much had changed.
Every other outbound flight besides mine was cancelled, and the weather
was supposed to clear up to allow planes to come in from Kangerlussuaq, one of
which would turn around and go to Nuuk.
If that happens, I will be thrilled, and I look forward to a celebratory
reindeer steak. Otherwise, not
good. After a bit, I changed into my
suit and then went outside to await my shuttle and sat down on a bench, where I
proceeded to light up an Ardor and write this entry, which I will now close, as
we will be leaving for the airport as soon as I finish this pipe.
Nuuk, Greenland, Kingdom of
Denmark
I am back where it all began, smoking my trusty Ardor in the exact same spot where I smoked my first pipe in Greenland four days agao. I did not think I would make it here tonight. The dateline serves a spoiler for the suspense of whether or not I made it, but I hope my tale will be told dramatically enough to still provide suspense even knowing how the tale ends. I did not think I would be making it here tonight, and the tale of how I did promises to be quite riveting.
After I closed at the hotel, I soon saw the
Danish girl again, and we talked about our adventures. She had one-upped me, going for a run around
town at 10 PM last night, and we both agreed how great it was to catch the
clear skies before the fog hit. The
shuttle soon took me to the airport, and, when I got there, it was filled with people waiting with various levels of patience.
I went to the check-in counter and said that I was checking in for the
Nuuk flight, asking if it was “still happening.” She thought it was, but the plane still had
to come in from Kangerlussuaq. This was
now around 4:30 PM. The flight had been
pushed from 5:20 PM to 5:55 PM. Figure
that the flight has leave Kangerlussuaq an hour before it can take off again
from Ilulissat.
There were three flights
waiting to come in from Kangerlussuaq, but only one of those would take off
again for Nuuk. That was tail number
OY-GRG. The others would, I presume,
head back to Kangerlussuaq in the morning. Without internet, the only things I could check were the arrivals board,
the tarmac, and the sky. At 4:45 PM, I
got an automated text that the flight was now being pushed back to 6:30
PM. This would give me just enough time
to have dinner at 9 PM at the hotel in Nuuk, if the schedule held.
Then the unthinkable happened, before my
waking eyes, I saw the fog start to lift and turn into thick and then thinner
clouds. Planes could land in this. I spent the next hour watching every movement
on the tarmac, the baggage handlers, the flight controllers, then I saw someone
walk out with a reflective suit and headphones.
He looked like the person who guides a plane with hand signals, whatever
the term for that person is.
Our plane soon landed, followed by another
one. That was all three of them. They all landed during that 30-minute window
with good skies. This was an airport
where typically only one plane lands per hour, and they had three land in less
than half an hour. We boarded almost
immediately, and I took the bulkhead exit.
Four seats in that row, and I was the only one to claim one of the
seats. Again, must be a cultural
thing.
We took off and soon broke
through the cloud bank, it being very dramatic to see it from above. In fact, it seemed like a giant cloud was
covering the whole island of Greenland. They
served cookies and coffee, which I realized was the first thing I put into my
body besides water, tobacco smoke, and air since I checked out of the hotel
eight hours ago. I just wanted my reindeer
steak in Nuuk. It was a short and
unadventurous flight until we had to make our descent.
We went through the cloud bank to make our
approach, and something seemed off. This
was taking far too long. We should have
been on the ground by now. Then I felt
the pressure of the seat against my back.
Deep in the thick of the cloud bank, it was impossible to tell which way
was up or down, but, I knew that if the seat was pressing against my back, it
meant we were going back up. My heart
stopped. Then I felt the sun against my
neck and saw that we were above the clouds.
The flight attendant told me that the captain would try again, and he
did, this time from the south. He did,
and I started to feel the pressure of the floor against the heel of my foot as
we were going down. Once I felt the
pressure of the floor against my toes, I knew that that approach had failed,
too. I asked the flight attendant, and
he told me in no uncertain terms that we could not land tonight.
I asked him where we were going, and he said
we would either divert to Kangerlussuaq or return to Ilulissat. I hoped for Kangerlussuaq, as that would be
easier to get to Nuuk in the morning, but I worried about finding a hotel (and
dinner) there at 10 PM. In case my
reader is not familiar with Greenland’s geography, from north to south it goes
Ilulissat-Kangerlussuaq-Nuuk. We had
just tried to make an approach from the south, so we were already heading in
the direction of Kangerlussuaq and Nuuk.
That’s why my heart started racing when the pilot started banking and
turning 180 degrees. He was going to
make another approach from the north.
This time I could tell he was doing some fancy flying. We very slowly descended into the cloud bank,
and it was a very bumpy ride, but I kept feeling the pressure against the heel
of my foot.
Then, I saw it, the water
below us, followed not long after by the buildings of Nuuk. The flight attendant was about to look out
the window, but one look at my face and the nod I gave him told him everything
he needed to know. We had made it. When I first saw Nuuk four days ago, it was
one of the most beautiful sites I had ever seen. Today, it was even more beautiful, but for a
different reason. When we landed, I clapped,
but, again, I was the only one, and, again, it must be a cultural thing.
I had never been so happy to see an airport
in my life. Well, maybe Kotzebue or
Barrow. This trip has been so similar to
Alaska in so many ways. We walked into
the familiar terminal, and my bag soon came.
It was now around 8:35 PM, and I worried about getting dinner in
time. Also, more on this later, as I
will likely need to deal with it tomorrow, but it turned out I had made my
hotel reservation in Reykjavik for tonight instead of tomorrow night, so that was
a bit of a process to resolve, and I still don’t technically have a room for
tomorrow.
Okay, I thought that the
restaurant at my hotel closed at 9 PM, so I knew I was on a tight
schedule. I got to my hotel around 8:45
PM, but they said that the restaurant was opened until 10 PM. Perfect.
I got changed and resituated and headed up for dinner. I had been thinking about that reindeer steak
all week. I was back in Nuuk, and I was
ready for it. It was perfect, so gamey,
like venison but better. It was topped
with garlic butter, which I used as a dip for my bread and to add some extra
flavor to my fries. I also had a beer to
go with it. That was it. No appetizer, no dessert, I just wanted that
steak.
Even if you count breakfast as
two meals, which I guess it was, today was an extremely light eating day for
me. Literally all I had to eat today was
a plate of cold food and a plate of hot food at breakfast, four small cookies
on the plane, and dinner, which consisted of four pieces of bread, butter,
fries, and the reindeer steak, plus beer, of course.
After dinner, I headed down to the smoking
room, grabbing a chair for the room. I
sat on the chair, where I proceeded to light up my trusty Ardor and write this
entry, which I will now close so that I can publish and post my photos before
going to bed. Tomorrow will be
jam-packed, actually: breakfast, a walk around town, fly to Reykjavik, stop at
the Blue Lagoon, dinner at the seafood buffet, and, then, if I have any energy
left whatsoever, go out for the white night party to properly celebrate the end
of my trip.
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