Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Next stop – the first of three port stops that made me choose this cruise itinerary – Nanortalik, GREENLAND bitches! I appreciate an obscure destination. Although we were visiting with 2000+ other cruise ship passengers which would kind of negate the idea of obscurity, right? Whatever, it’s still cool.

But before I even saw land I saw my very first iceberg. MY FIRST EVER! I was inordinately excited about the idea of seeing icebergs for the first time ever when booking and anticipating this trip. So that would explain this truly horrible photo of an iceberg I took through a dirty window in a ship restaurant, and why I’m saving it here for all eternity as record of my FIRST EVER ICEBERG SIGHTING.

Don’t worry, the iceberg photos get a little better. Like these!

And then these shots of them with land that is green(ish). So epic.

As you can probably tell from the photos the weather wasn’t the best. It was really overcast, there was a little rain, and it was windy. The captain announced that they wouldn’t start the tender boat process to go onshore for a bit due to weather, and then when tendering started it was 3 hours before Scott & I were able to get on one. There were 4 boats in process, but there was only one small dock onshore for them to use and it took a really long time to get people on/off the tender boats.

My first honest thought getting off the boat was that we didn’t belong there. I mean this town is teeny tiny. The internet says that as of 2020 there were 1,185 inhabitants, and the number of passengers on this ship was north of 2,000. We might have seen 50 locals on-shore out and about while we were there. I know a lot of people didn’t disembark due to the tender boat slowness, but still. And there weren’t even many opportunities on land to spend money for the community, very few in fact. We tried to buy some Danish candy in the grocery store and then realized it was cash only. Hopefully NCL had to pay a hefty fee for this intrusion.

Regardless of my big feelings, I really did enjoy stopping here. It was really beautiful. It was raining on us for a lot of it, but my favorite color is gray so that just added to my enjoyment honestly.

After walking around for about 90 minutes, we then stood in the tender boat line for about an hour to get back on board. Despite the time inefficiencies and colonizer guilt I’m glad we walked around town, especially since (spoiler alert) this would be our only Greenland opportunity.

Bon appetit and good night from the buffet!

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