Day 5 - Tasiilaq-Kulusuk-Nerlerit Inaat-Ittoqqortoormiit:

Another day where the alarm clock awakes us, but again on travel days such things are of little importance.
An early breakfast, followed by a quick check out and then a drive to the heliport where the Air Greenland Bell 212 awaited.
I felt ready to leave Tasiilaq, while an amazing place with great potential, the dirtiness of the place still burns in the back of my mind keeping me from being totally sold on the place.
Would still love to go back, but it is a place where getting the streets cleaned up would help tremendously.
The flight to Kulusuk, was with a light high altitude cloud cover, providing us with a perfect sight to the small glaciers and dagger like peaks, a very beautiful flight.
Arriving at Kulusuk we were greeted by a gorgeous biplane that was on it’s way from somewhere to somewhere else. What a beautiful Aircraft.

We did not have a very long wait in Kulusuk and an hour later the AirIceland Aircraft took off heading towards our destination - Nerlerit Inaat.
A stunning flight with a birds eye view to a multitude of high peaks and huge glaciers, one scenery more stunning than the other in an endless row for two hours. It simply was a magnificent flight and we were blessed with clear skies and the only bump was when hitting the dirt runway in Nerlerit Inaat.
The flight in towards Nerlerit Inaat was another out of this world beautiful experience, to see a landscape so barren and so carved by ice was extraordinary, especially with the birds eye view the aircraft allowed.
When the flight came to a holt at the apron, we were told to walk directly to the Air Greenland Bell 222 for our flight to Ittoqqortoormiit. A flight that was perhaps even more amazing than the first. Save for my flights around Kangia near Ilulissat then this is perhaps the most beautiful helicopter flight ever.

Arrival at the heliport was a new experience. A small levelled hilltop with a gravel road leading down is more correct, no buildings no nothing. We were picked up by Jennifer from the local guest house.
We turned down the offer for a ride and walked our way to the guesthouse.
The walk sat us back in awe, this settlement is what I can without a doubt call the most impressive settlement I have seen.
A view unlike anything I have ever seen. The mouth of the fiord with a size that is hard to grasp distant snow covered peaks and a constant mist playing among the distant icebergs. Both Louise and I were totally in love from the first step of the walk.
Even though located way up North and the Northern most settlement in Greenland, it seems more organised cleaner and better maintained than Tasiilaq. Our first impression tells us that Ittoqqortoormiit is a place we will return to with absolute certainty. And that the two weeks planned here will only be enough to scratch the surface of this place.


As we walk up to the guest house and see Jennifer work her rear end off showing guests around, we are told that she will be with us in a couple of minutes. Two minutes later we are shown to a room of excellent standard and the shared kitchens and bathrooms are of the same high standard. This guest house is of much higher standard than anything we have seen elsewhere in Greenland. Not to mention the first class service provided by Jennifer.
We settle in quickly and walks towards Nanu Travel to catch up on our plans for the next two weeks, but they are closed, same goes for the local super market.
It may sound strange, but we get the feeling that we are wrong about something, turning on the GPS in my watch confirms it, Ittoqqortoormiit is two hours ahead of the rest of Greenland and everything should be closed.
We walk up to a small grocery store and buy some basic food for dinner and heads back to the hostel where we prepare it and enjoy a quiet dinner, while discussing an evening walk.

I grab a camera and we head out into the late evening sun. We walk up along the cemetery, where people are more covered with stone than actually buried, simply because there is not such thing as soil in this arctic desert area. It is all rock, ice and water.
From here we tour around the settlement for a good hour and the walk confirms our first impressions, this place is very unique and most surprising given where it is located and what we saw in Tasiilaq.
We even got to see the fur from a newly shot polar bear hanging for dry outside one of the houses, a very fresh reminded of that we are guests in a country ruled by polar bears and we better respect that and take our precautions.
We turn in for the night after a very long and very exciting day, we may not know what tomorrow brings, but both of us feel the adventures awaiting us.