Monday 17 August 2009

Uummannaq

Uummannaq is a beautiful place. The small fishing community is situated on the sea with a very impressive heart-shaped mountain looming over it. While Uummannaq does mean heart-like or heart-shaped, today we thought it looked more like the profile of a man

with a toupee looking up.
First off the ship were those of us going to the desert. The excursion boats picked everyone up right at the ship. There were hundreds of icebergs, if not thousands of icebergs on the way to The Desert.
At 10:30 many of us headed to shore where we explored town, visited the museum, and explored the authentic turf huts just in front of the old church. The museum looked particularly lovely today with a carpet of daisies growing all around it.
Some of us opted to eat on shore at the Uummannaq Hotel where they served an excellent buffet of authentic Greenland food. Here you can get muskox, salmon, char, minke whale and many other Greenland foods.
At 13:00 we all met on shore for our hike that would lead us right past Uummannaq Mountain (the man with the bad hair piece) on our way to Santa Claus’ summer home. Up and down and around we scrambled over the rocks. And who did we find at Santa’s place? Not Santa Claus but our expedition leader, Anja Erdmann and our Hotel Manager Else Kristine with some very welcome hot chocolate, coffee, tea and cold water which they had delivered by our speedy Polar Cirkle boats!
At 16:30 we were all back on the ship and looking forward to a pleasant evening of scenic cruising as we continue to make our way north.