Nanortalik, Greenland
Blue Sky, Bright Sun, Hi 48
Sunrise 6:02, Sunset 10:09
We start with the announcements.
- 52 years ago today Cheryl said those fateful words, “I do.” And our adventure began. It continues and we have faith that it will continue for quite a few more years.
- Part of today’s excursion in Nanortalik included a visit to a local museum. There are a lot of photos. There will be a ‘Day 8b’ wtih those photos. If you don’t want to devote time to them you won’t miss any of the story. Also, while there were a pretty impressive number of items in the museum none of them were labeled. So We can generally guess what they are, sometimes all we could say is ‘interesting’.
- This afternoon we had a ‘scenic sailing’ thru Prince Christian Sound. This is a magnificent open-ended fjord with dozens of hanging glaciers and icebergs. Again, it was a picture snapper’s dream so I’ve included a ‘Day 8c’ with a selection of the photos from that passage.
So…we celebrated this morning by turning off the alarm and sleeping for another hour. This gave us just enough time to get ready and eat breakfast before meeting for our assigned time to tender into the village of Nanortalik.
Arriving at the dock we used the map they had provided to join our fellow passengers in wandering around the harbor to the church where (the map said) there would be a choir concert.
They were what you’d expect, but they were charming and their music, while not production quality was a good example of local color.
Next we went searching for the ‘kayak story teller’. We never found him but we did find the museum spread out around several buildings at the end of the road.
We also found a ‘photo-bench’ and sat for our anniversary photo.
The last stop on our tour was a plaza where a young performer sang, drummed, and performed for us.
Then it was back to the tender,
and off to the ship for lunch.
After lunch was a lecture on the migration of birds (which we watched on the TV rebroadcast tonight because after lunch we took a nap).
The next talk, by Russell Lee dealt with Inuit folk tales and covered a range of topics ranging from creation stories to cautionary tales to shamanic practices. He noted (and provided examples) that often stories varied by region and even from village to village.
After this lecture we headed up to the Explorer’s lounge to try to find someplace to sit. No such luck. It seems that everyone had the same idea.
The attraction was a ‘scenic sailing’ of the Prince Christian Sound – a 60 mile long glacier-cut fjord system connecting the Labrador Sea (on the west) to the Irminger Sea (on the east). It’s a spectacular length of high cliffs, hanging glaciers (they used to reach all the way to the water but, you know, global warming), and icebergs.
As I mentioned, most of the images we took will be in Day 8c but here’s a teaser.
We sailed out of the sound around 7:30 but we took a break at 6:30 for another lecture.
It was kind-of funny because this was one of the standard Viking slide decks presented by Jack Bacon, our resident rocket scientist. He has worked on many of the missions mentioned in the deck and was able to make corrections and update with current information in several cases.
While we were at dinner we sailed out fo the sound – and into a fog bank.
Then it was back to the stateroom to begin sorting thru photos and get ready for bed.
We lose an hour tonight as we move to Iceland Time.
But tomorrow’s a sea day so the schedule is bit more relaxed (yah, right).
Till then,
R