GREENLAND: KANGERLUSSUAQ

 June 17, 2019

We stayed less than 24 hours in Kangerlussuaq, arriving in late afternoon on a Monday and flying out mid-morning on a Tuesday. There isn't a ton of tourist activity drawing people to Kangerlussuaq, but there are only two ways to get out of Ilulissat: fly back to Iceland or fly to Kangerlussuaq, and then fly from there to Copenhagen. Since we had flown in from Iceland, we chose to fly out via Kangerlussuaq.

This may be the only airport in the world with a taxidermied musk ox in the lobby:

I had to look up "Tikilluarit." It's Greenlandic for "Welcome."  Duh.

Kangerlussuaq and its airport actually started out as a US airbase established in 1941 with the intent to protect Greenland from the Nazis and as a strategic location for the US. Back then it was known as "Bluie West-8." The name was changed to the more proper-sounding "Sondrestrom Air Base" in 1951. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the usefulness of the air base waned, and US troops withdrew in 1992. Greenland home rule took over the site and renamed it "Kangerlussuaq," or "Big Fjord." Almost all of the permanent structures at and surrounding the airport were built during the 50 years the area was occupied by US forces.

Our hotel was actually an extension of the tiny airport, and to get to our room we had to go down a hallway, down five steps, down a long hallway, down a flight of stairs, down another long hallway, down a second flight of stairs, and down yet another long hallway to our room at the far end--no elevators.

Wikipedia's winter photo of the airport terminal on the left and the hotel stretching off to the right.

Any guesses what the name of our hotel was? (Drum roll) Hotel Kangerlussuaq. Yes, another innovative name.

The hotel gets just three stars on TripAdvisor, and it was certainly nothing glamorous, but we were pleasantly surprised by the size of our room. It really was a small apartment. There was an entry hall, a very large bedroom with a walk-in closet, an office room with a desk, and a teeny tiny bathroom with no shower door or curtain and a single drain in the middle of the floor. It was nice to be able to spread out a little bit, even if it was for just one night.

After we checked in, we were picked up by a man driving a very old full-sized bus and taken through "town" (which was more or less non-existent other than the airport complex) to Roklubben Restaurant, a couple of miles away from our hotel via a gravel road, one of only a few roads in Greenland that is outside of a town. The restaurant is not housed in a very glamorous building--really more of an extended mobile home:

But the setting on the banks of Lake Ferguson, known in Greenlandic as Tasersuatsiaq, is pretty spectacular. The lake is up to 250 feet deep, covers an area of almost three square miles, and provides fresh water to Kangerlussuaq.

Centerpieces--Denmark's and Greenland's flags:

We had a set menu arranged by our tour company. We began with a halibut plate:

. . . followed by a rib-eye steak with mashed potatoes, pickled onions, and mushrooms. It was good, but not spectacular.

Bob was disappointed with the menu selection as he had read that the restaurant serves muskox, reindeer, and whale, so he asked for a side course of muskox tartare--raw ground meat. It made me feel a little better about my rib-eye:

At the end of the meal, the waiter brought out a big birthday sheet cake, and we started singing happy birthday to Mike (again). A rowdy table of young people next to us also sang and more than doubled our volume. As we left, Mike presented that group with the remainder of the cake:

One of most unusual adventures of the entire trip followed this final dinner in Greenland. Stay tuned!