Elusive Ilulissat

Day 4 finds us first thing in the morning sailing to the Eqip Glacier, in which neither the “q” nor the “p” are pronounced so I am truly perplexed and have no idea how to say it correctly. At breakfast many passengers were buzzing about the ice we had run into during the wee hours but I missed that excitement.

En-route to Ilulissat, the Captain informed us that there was too much ice in the harbor and we could not get close to Greenland’s 3^rd largest city. It was a gray, windy, day with intermittent pelting rain. The Iceland ProCruises’ staff scrambled to make changes as the city walk, air safari, ice fjord cruises and Sermermiut Iceberg hike were all cancelled. They arranged for 3 local boat owners to come 5 miles out to get passengers and cruise the UNESCO World Heritage ice fjord site. Passengers were divided into 3 groups for each of the local boats, the Frank, Maya and Katak. I was reassigned to the Maya for the last run of the day at 6:30pm. At 6:15 I went down all dressed in my long johns, down coat, wind breaker, water proof pants, hiking boots, hat, 2 pairs of gloves only to learn the last 3 boat trips were cancelled. The local boat captains had called to say the winds had whipped up the waves and the ice was moving too fast making it dangerous to attempt the 3^rd, 2-hour excursion. They wanted to get all the guests back onboard and still had 5 miles to travel back to port.

Mother Nature rules. When the locals say it’s too dangerous, it is.

Our plan B is to sail to Sisimiut as we were supposed to spend the night in the Ilulissat harbor and continue activities in the morning. Apparently the experts were not expecting the ice to blow out of the harbor! Again the IPC staff has spent most of the day working to get docking permission and arranging activities there. Sisimiut is Greenland’s 2nd largest city – we shall see what adventures tomorrow brings.

The above photos are the Eqip Glacier, to the left, my favorite iceberg of the day. (kiki)