Killing time in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland
Posted: Friday, August 31, 2007 3:06 PM
Filed Under:
On Assignment
By Mario Garcia, NBC News Producer
UPDATE: After traveling from Illulisat to Kangerlussuaq to Copenhagen and on to London, the NBC News crew made it back stateside when they arrived in Baltimore on Saturday.
Editor’s Note: NBC News Anne Thompson and her crew were on assignment in Greenland, but due to a strike by Air Greenland, flights have been few and far between. Anne managed to get out of town on Thursday evening, but her crew – producer Mario Garcia, photographer Bruce Bernstein and his son and soundman, Curt Bernstein were not so lucky.
KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland –
Once our correspondent Anne Thompson managed to catch a flight, the rest of us – Bruce, Curt, and I – decided to go ahead and hike out to an ice fjord in Ilulissat. And it was a good thing because after having been on iceberg cruises and flying over ice sheets, we all agreed that the most amazing sight was the sunset last night – at 10:30 p.m.
With 20 hours of daylight in Greenland during the summer – it means long working days or long layovers when you are delayed like we are. But we were delighted to catch one more glimpse of the natural beauty Greenland has to offer.
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| Curt Bernstein / NBC News |
| So many places to go, so few planes! NBC News’ Mario Garcia and Bruce Bernstein in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. |
Not so fast
On Friday morning we got some good news when we heard the Greenland Air strike was over.
With that, we presumed we could get from where we sat in Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland’s major airport on the west coast.
We called Air Greenland and of course they said, "There are flights, but you’re not on any of them."
However, after some back and forth and some time left on interminable hold, the agent from Air Greenland did get back to me with a flight from Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq. I asked here when it left and she said, "When you get here."
So after a mad dash to the airport, we hopped a flight to Kangerlussuaq.
Once we got on the plane, all of the announcements were made in Danish, Greenlandic (an Inuit language), and English – except the safety announcements in the case of an emergency, which were only in Danish and Greenlandic! Good thing we’ve flown a lot and know what to do! (Greenland has been self-governing since 1979, but it is still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark).
The strike has been frustrating, but Air Greenland has actually been doing a good job of getting everyone to and fro. They have been very good about given us free food – excellent Greenlandic fare – free hotels and even a free beer with our meal tickets.
Maybe a musk ox safari?
So now we are in Kangerlussuaq, and here we sit.
Basically, the entire town consists of the airport. The hotel is at the airport and everyone who lives in Kangerlussuaq is at the airport. It appears to be a town of about six people. It was an old U.S. airforce base during World War II, so that’s why there is a big runway here.
We’d walk around, but there is nothing to walk to. Terminal One is about 10 yards from the entrance to the hotel – so this is it. There is nothing here.
You can allegedly go sight-seeing here. You can apparently go on a Musk ox safari or hop on a helicopter to go check out the ice. But after having already done that with some world class climatologists like Koni Steffen, it seems a bit passe.
Air Greenland tells us that we’ll either go to Copenhagen, Iceland, or maybe Brazil tomorrow (just kidding about Brazil). So meantime, we’re here and we don’t know where we’re headed next.
