They say that you need to be ready for anything when it comes to traveling in Greenland because the weather is in control and our short time here has proven that point. We had our one-day delay getting up to Ilulissat and getting out of Ilulissat was more difficult than we planned. This journal entry is going to get us from north of the Arctic Circle down to our new home – Amman, Jordan – not sure we could find a bigger contrast. Icebergs, colorful buildings and a very small population to the desert, heat, sandstone-colored buildings and a city of more than 4,000,000 people.
Nobody was scheduled to arrive at our apartment on Thursday, so Jannik informed us that we didn’t have to vacate our room until it was time for him to take us to the airport. We had a relaxing morning getting things done and getting packed and then we walked to Hangout Bistro for one more meal and say goodbye to our friends there. Sandy had beef stew with rice and I had the English breakfast with pancakes again. We went back to the apartment and Jannik took us to the airport, arriving there at 3:45pm for our 4:50pm flight. It was very foggy all day, but our flight continued to show on time and I was tracking it through its flights during the day – Nuuk to Ilulissat, Ilulissat way up north to Qaanaaq before coming back to get us in Ilulissat to take us to Nuuk. Well, everything was good and our plane was just about to land at Ilulissat (we could hear it), but they must have reached decision height and couldn’t see the runway because then they went full power and diverted to Kangerlussuaq. Bummer. The agent we talked with at the airport wasn’t very helpful in terms of telling us what to expect. She gave us a piece of paper that she wrote 23 Red House on along with an entry code and said we needed to find a taxi and the driver would know where to go – they would reimburse us for the cost of the taxi – and we should receive an email telling us when our new flight would be. We are supposed to be on a flight from Nuuk to Copenhagen first thing tomorrow morning, so that will have to be rescheduled as well. There was a Russian group and some of the guys were being less than patient – the police came and we could hear one of them being tackled. It was all unfortunate – there wasn’t much that could be done. The weather is what it is and it’s not like there are a lot of flights to choose from in these remote places and the planes only hold around 37 passengers each. Well, the taxi driver did know where to go and we ended up at a house that has four bedrooms.
We were the only ones there when we arrived and we took one of the rooms. Not long afterward, a couple from Barcelona arrived and a couple from Copenhagen. The fourth room was occupied by a helicopter pilot from Iceland who is here to fly scientists out to the ice sheet for a study they are doing. At the house, we started trying to figure out our new options – we did get notified that we were rebooked to Nuuk on Saturday (remember, this is Thursday) and then from Nuuk to Copenhagen on Sunday. That was going to cause us to miss our flights on Sunday from Copenhagen to Amman. We ended up putting a hold on a change to our flights on Sunday and moving them to Monday to get us to Amman and we’ll do some more checking tomorrow.
In addition to covering our lodging, Air Greenland also gave us meal vouchers – the equivalent of $100 for five meals each. We had wanted to try Inuit Café and we walked there, arriving just as they were closing the kitchen. They said if we ordered fast, we could stay. We did and we both had excellent baked halibut, baby shrimp, vegetables, and rice. We were back home around 9:15, watched an episode of Frasier, and went to bed.
Friday morning, we spent more time considering our options. We tried to call Air Greenland to see if there were any options to get to Nuuk today and see if they were covering lodging in Nuuk on Saturday night or if we needed to work on that. After being on hold for 30 minutes, I accidentally disconnected the call. We enjoyed a cup of chai tea and talked with the Barcelona couple – they were pretty much in the same boat as we were. They decided to go to the airport again and see if they would have any luck. We started making our plans based on the new schedule Air Greenland had given us. We contacted our host in Amman and moved our arrival date to Monday instead of Sunday and pretty much put our plan together for what we needed to do with the other changes. We decided to head out for a hike on the yellow trail to take advantage of our last day – hoping it’s our last day anyway – in Ilulissat. As we were leaving, the Barcelona couple came back and informed us that they were able to get on a flight tomorrow morning and then get on the Nuuk to Copenhagen flight tomorrow afternoon. We adjusted and got a taxi to the airport to see if we could have the same luck. This time, we lucked out and got Superwoman at the airport to help us. She got us on a flight tomorrow morning to Nuuk and to Copenhagen tomorrow night. The worst part of all of this is that we are missing our opportunity to see our friends, John and Sara in Copenhagen for dinner tonight. We were supposed to have enough time to make that happen and we were really looking forward to it. But, we at least now have a plan that keeps our Sunday flights intact and we are confident that we’ll be able to adjust our apartment in Amman back to the original date. Happy with the results, we called Capital One and told them to not confirm the change to the Monday flights and then we took a taxi back to town and grabbed halibut and fried rice at Café Iluliaq. We joked that the reason for our flight issues was because Sandy wanted halibut again here and she also wanted to hike the yellow trail. We contacted the Copenhagen hotel to let them know that we would not make it there tonight but still wanted the room for tomorrow night and that we would arrive late. No problem. After lunch, we ran into George (Emi flew out as scheduled this morning – we are happy that the weather was beautiful today and she didn’t have the same challenges we had yesterday) and chatted with him for a few minutes. Then, it was off to the Icefjord Center and the start of the yellow trail. This trail was much shorter and a little easier terrain. The scenery along the icefjord again was incredible – this was our favorite of the two trail hikes we did.
We didn’t do the red trail – that one is the shortest and we had a good sense of it based on the others we did. After showers, we walked again to Hangout Bistro and had a Friday night pizza and large Qajaq dark beers. We also got to see Aileen one more time and say goodbye to her. We deemed her our favorite Greenlander. She is actually from the Philippines but has lived here for several years and we consider a Greenlander. She was so sweet and took good care of us every time we stopped in at Hangout Bistro.
Yesterday morning (Saturday), we were up early. We walked over to the Hotel Icefjord for their nice breakfast buffet (and views of the icebergs) and then headed back to the house, had Jorgen (our host) call us a taxi and we were back at the airport at 9:35am, this time for our flight scheduled at 10:55am. We checked in, filled out the form for the taxi reimbursement, there was no security to pass through, and awaited our plane.
Our flight was delayed, but it took off at 11:45 and landed in Nuuk at 1pm. Our Copenhagen flight wasn’t until 2:30pm, so we were in good shape. We boarded that Air Greenland flight and it took off at 3pm. I have to say – Air Greenland did a great job with the situation. The first agent wasn’t very helpful, but overall, we were impressed. In the US, if weather causes flight issues, you are on your own generally. Between the lodging and the food vouchers, and even Capital One came through and gave us a $100 travel credit just for the hassles – the Venture X is an awesome card to have for anybody who travels a lot – we ended up coming out $187 ahead in the whole deal. Still would have rather had things go as planned so we could have spent time with John and Sara. Copenhagen is three hours ahead of Nuuk and we landed around 10pm – they served a cold meal of beef, pickles, tomatoes, potato salad, a roll, and pop tart. It was easy getting out of the airport and a 15-minute walk to the Best Western Plus. We were tired and had another early morning ahead of us.
Today we started with our alarm at 5am and departure from the hotel a little before 6. A nice morning walk back to the airport and an easy check-in process put us through security in Copenhagen around 6:30 for our flight scheduled at 8:10 to Amsterdam on Scandinavian Airlines. We had soft-boiled eggs, smoothies, bananas, yogurt, and a blueberry muffin for breakfast and boarded right on schedule. While we were waiting to board at our gate in Amsterdam, our friend Mathis who we met when we went to see the penguins in Punta Arenas, Chile walked up. That is documented in this journal entry. It is so wild to run into people unexpectedly in different parts of the world. We were so happy to see him as we both follow his worldly travels on Facebook and he had just been in Romania. We had no idea we’d cross paths on a flight when we were all moving on to new places.
Sandy and I slept on the one-hour flight over to Amsterdam, where we had about a six-hour layover. In Amsterdam, we worked on the blog, had chocolate bars for a snack, and had salads and chicken pesto wraps for lunch. We finally found out where our flight would depart from and eventually headed to our gate. The lounge where we could have relaxed was too busy – I think we were number 121 in the virtual line and we didn’t want to wait for that to clear. At least they had a nice web site to manage that process. The gate for our flight to Amman opened around 2:30pm, which is when we were able to get our boarding passes. The Royal Jordanian flight boarded on schedule and we departed around 4pm. Amman is one hour ahead of Amsterdam and we landed in Amman shortly after 9pm. It’s going to take some adjusting to get used to seeing darkness again. It was nice to see the Big Dipper on our walk to the hotel last night in Copenhagen. We haven’t really had darkness since mid-June when we left the States. We obtained our VISA on arrival – we had purchased the Jordan Pass, which waives VISA fees for most nationalities and grants entry to more than 40 of the main tourist attractions across Jordan – excellent deal and streamlines the process nicely. After the VISA, a stop at passport control, and picking up our bags, we grabbed a taxi to our apartment building in the center of Amman, arriving there around 10:45pm. Well, we made it when we were supposed to make it when we started out Thursday morning, but the hoops we went through in between were not expected. We are grateful, we only run into these kinds of hurdles on occasion. Can’t wait to see how our Jordan experiences help us both grow.
