I’m super excited to blog about this next adventure – it’s a week-long 100km kayaking and hiking expedition in the fjords of Southern Greenland! I booked this Much Better Adventures trip after hearing some glowing reviews of the company.
On the flight to Greenland I caught my first glimpse of the great ice shelf extending into the distance. It covers approximately 80% of the land area of the world’s largest island (which sounds super positive but it will shrink due to climate change). There is a lot of variation in the ice visible from the plane. We landed on quite a short runway for a 737, nicely done. There was sea ice on both sides of the plane for a while. Strange experience.
I still had no idea which passengers were part of my group when I went to collect my holdall from a cute baggage conveyor in the tiny terminal building.
I met the group outside and we headed immediately to the port at Narsarsuaq to load our gear onto a boat to transfer us to Narsaq, the second largest settlement in Southern Greenland.
The journey was absolutely incredible. The water was so calm and full of beautiful icebergs!
We arrived in Narsaq and moved our equipment up to the Kayak Hostel. I was in a tiny room with 4 other women with barely enough room to fit us and our kit in! I was on top bunk which was an administrative nightmare for packing but oh well!! We headed pretty much straight to dinner and introduced ourselves to each other. The guide is Ruben from El Calafate in Patagonia, the assistant guide is Christian from Denmark. There were two British couples from London, an American couple from Texas, a Spanish woman from Barcelona, a German woman from Hamburg (Julia, who I shared a tent with for the week), a Swiss woman, a Ukrainian woman living in Switzerland. None of us had a huge amount of kayak experience and so I expected we would have to go in double kayaks but we were offered the choice. I ended up in a single kayak and was very content with that!
Ruben handed us each a dry suit, skirt, life jacket and wellie boots and gave us a demo on how to put on the dry suit. Then we were left to pack. We’ve not got a huge amount of space (and the lighter the kit, the better!), so it was a challenge to figure out what to take and what to leave!
Narsaq is situated south of the Arctic circle and so the sun does set throughout the summer… technically… though it sets so late and rises so early that it never gets dark! It’s wonderful.
So awesome.
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