This morning’s short hike was really enjoyable. It was Goldilocks weather… not too hot, not too cold. We were ferried to a rocky little beach, with a hill we climbed to see the view behind.

The medium hikers are in the background, heading off for their 3 hour hike. we stopped halfway up, so the guide could give us some info about the permafrost.

Permafrost is 2m down, underneath our feet. It covers 25% of the Northern Hemisphere. The reason the ground feels so spongy underfoot is because it’s so hard that there’s nowhere for the water to go.

Active permafrost thaws and freezes during the year. This upper layer is so soggy it feels like a sponge. Sometimes it’s like quicksand. We were warned to stick to the vegetation wherever possible and to move quickly when we were walking on rocks or clay.

As the upper layer freezes and thaws, stones get pushed up to the surface, by 1mm a year. This is a slope, so they move downhill in what they call “streaking.” You can see in the photo that it looks like stripes.

I’m walking here by myself. They’ve created a really large perimeter around the lake and we’ve all spread out. Just walking on our own as you can see. This is what I see when I look to the right.

This is what I see when I look straight ahead. You can see the damned cloud cover, which looks all misty and lovely but is stopping the Northern Lights from showing themselves.

And this is what I see when I look to the left. It looks like a little glacier. It’s totally quiet. I’m speaking into my notes in a very hushed tone because I don’t want to disturb anyone else. All you can hear is very low pushing sound of the wind,  there’s no rain. All I can hear is the crunch of my muck boots on the dirt.

Sound travels here. I can hear Mandarin and German floating on the wind.

I came across this wonderful rock. The colours are so saturated it almost seems impossible that they’re natural. A German couple was walking by and they were going to miss it, so I called out to them and they came over to see.

I thought I’d do a quick circuit of the lake and then go back because there seems to be nothing here, but it’s so calm and peaceful. I find myself just aimlessly wandering, prolonging the experience before I go back to the ship.

This is beautiful. It’s almost how I imagine it must look like when the first snow falls. The guides say that there is new snow on the high mountains surrounding us. Winter is on its way.

I found these bones, which I guess proves that there are animals here. If you’re looking for wildlife in Greenland, it seems that September isn’t the time to see much. There are hardly any birds, even.

After an hour, I went back to the ship. It was a quiet walk, full of autumn colours and there was room to process my thoughts and simply be in the space.

After lunch I had a lovely nap with the ship rocking me to sleep, because we were heading towards our next stop, the little village of Ittoqqortoormiit.

This is the view from the zodiac. The buildings here were sent from Denmark and each colour means a different thing.

I suppose it would also make it easier in a blizzard to see where the buildings were, though during winter, the houses are sometimes completely covered by snow.

The sea freezes and they are snowed in for at least 8 months each year.

Puppies! The adult dogs are tied up, like the sledding dogs we saw last year in Juneau, but the pups are allowed to run free.

Here’s the church.

It’s Danish Lutheran. There was a man handing out printed info pages in English, much to the bemusement of the Taiwanese passengers.

One of the Taiwanese women was nice enough to offer to take my picture. “You solo traveller?”

They look like houses kids would draw, don’t they? The roads were pretty rough, and we saw the people getting around on quads. I only saw 2 cars while we were there.

There was fog all around the town.

I noticed this woman’s hand-knitted headband and asked if I could take her picture. She was sitting in the playground with some friends, while children crawled on the play equipment behind them.

Then, excitement! Morgan came down the hill and pointed out 2 Arctic hares. Finally! Wildlife!

They were quite unafraid. I found out later that the people here no longer eat the Arctic hares, though of course they did so in the past.

I stayed so long looking at the hares that I almost forgot about the dog feeding down at the bridge at 6:30.

omg

I started power walking downhill, through the winding streets as quickly as I could.

Look at the polar bear pants on the boy. How warm would they be?

To my disappointment, the dogs were fed pellets of dog food. I was expecting them to be given raw meat.

Dogs always know when it’s dinner time.

Their kennels look incredibly basic, but I remember in Juneau they said that the dogs overheat if they’re brought inside.

I wandered over to join Morgan, who was talking to a young woman called Batheba. Honestly, the Greenland government should pay her a wage. She was so open and friendly and we had a great time talking to her, finding out more about this place.

An interesting thing happened when one of the Taiwanese women gave her a pack of freeze dried peanuts. Batheba didn’t know what they were.

That was pretty surprising, right? Peanuts are everywhere. She tried them and then shared them around with us all, so I don’t know that she really liked them.

She was telling us how, when the sea freezes, you have to be careful on the ice because polar bears appear so silently, and there’s no surviving an attack.

A few months ago, a friend of hers was sitting on the ice and a polar bear cub walked right by her. She kept so still. As you would. She said that she thinks it was able to smell the dog food and not her.

Today was a very good day. We have only 2 more excursion days left in this leg of the trip before we head back to Iceland.

Dad joke of the day: