Sunday 25 July 2010

What's Drying On Your Porch?

We are back to fantastic weather again!  
Today was a full and rewarding day.  We visited two really special places, Uummannaq and Ukusissat.  
As any Greenlander can tell you, Uummannaq is where Santa Claus lives in the summer.  Santa's cabin just happens to be a perfect place from which to start a hike.  The hikers would go across country and meet up with the ship in Uummannaq, about an hour and a half from their starting point.  As you can see in the photographs the country is rugged and beautiful.


Next on our agenda is one of my favourite stops in all of Greenland, the small village of Ukusissat.  It is special for many reasons.  It is situated in an impossibly beautiful setting and it is the best place on our itinerary to get to know the local people.  
We always invite people from the village on board Fram where they entertain us with their choir, folk dancing and by modelling some of their native clothes.  Usually we expect twenty or so visitors.  This time over fifty people came to see us!  Everyone in Ukusissat was excited to see Fram as it was our first visit this year.    For those of us that work on Fram it is a chance to meet up with friends. We were excited too! For most of our passengers it was a first time visit to Greenland and a really great opportunity to talk and interact with local people,  so everyone was eager for this stop!

After the choir and folk dancing we hopped on the Polar Cirkle boats for a short ride to the village.  Here we were invited to the community house for coffee and cake.
By midnight we were all back on Fram.  Weary but happy!