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| Our chartered plane on the tarmac Kangerlussaq |
We are actually on a flight home from Toronto. Our opinion that Pearson airport is among our least favourite has been affirmed. We did manage to find the walkway from the hotel but once in the airport the signage was just about as bad as trying to find the hotel last night. I was going to take a photo of what the entrance to the hotel looked like but I didn’t do it. We’ll be flying out of Toronto on a charter next year which won’t be as bad as trying to find a domestic flight. I will say that the waiting areas at the gates weren’t as full as they are in Calgary, which, i suppose is an advantage of sorts. I think I’d rather have an easier time figuring out where I’m going than have more seats in the waiting areas.
I didn’t do any of my repacking last night but had plenty of time to do it today. Last night when we checked in, they offered us an upgrade to the lounge rather than just the restaurant/bar and we took it. I was skeptical this morning about whether that was just an upsell for a couple of tired travellers but when we went in for breakfast, there was Christine.
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| Christine and friends last moments on Ocean Endeavour |
I was lamenting on the way down from the room that we probably wouldn’t see her before we left. We had a nice visit with her and her two table mates.They asked me about my ukuleles and I can go on a bit too long about that when I get going. The husband was a guitar player when he was younger and had a great story about writing a wedding song and playing it when his bride came out of the house for the ceremony. They were married in her parents’ backyard. The people we meet on these trips are really very interesting and there were only a two people we met that we preferred to avoid.
In some ways, when I’m in the middle of one of these trips the days are so full that it’s only when the trip is over that I can sit back and really appreciate what a great experience it was. It was interesting in her third talk that Aleqa administered a sideways rebuke to Adventure Canada. One of the things Chris our Expedition Leader was really good at was finding landing sites AC had never been to before. He says he would go up on the bridge with a chart and say to the captain, “I want to go there,” and he’d point, “can we?” The captain would look at him and after a few moments of silence as he considered the charts he would say yes.Chris was very proud that we had explored 6 new sites for future landings for AC. Aleqa, during her talk, asked if we had noticed that there was no border security and said that in the future that would change. People wouldn’t be able to just land wherever they wanted without checking with Greenland first. I’m not exactly sure how they will manage that and it will put a cramp in AC’s style but we’ll wait and see. Greenland certainly doesn’t have the infrastructure to check every ship in its waters at the moment.
I don’t think I mentioned this yesterday but when we were out on the tundra tour, we saw some fighter jets and a bigger plane in formation. The fighters were following the large jet at what looked like close range. We wondered what was going on and asked Mike to relay our questions to the guide. The guide said that it was part of a military exercise by the Danish Air Force. The bigger plane, according to him, was a fuel tanker from France that was responsible for refuelling the F18’s in the air. We didn’t see that particular manoeuvre but it would have been cool. When we got to the bridge leading out of the town of Kangerlusuuaq, there was a military check point set up. From where i was sitting I couldn’t figure out what was going on because all I could see was the tops of the soldiers’ gilly helmets. On our way back to the airport we got a good look at them and they all smiled and waved as we went by.
I bought a Kangerlussuuaq T-shirt before we got on the plane. It’s a maroon colour sort of like the jelly bean row T-shirt I bought in St. John’s last year. This trip I bought one in Yellowknife, one in Sisimiut, and one in Kangerlusuuaq. I guess that means I’ll have to ditch three of the t’s that are getting a bit used around the edges. I notice that the New Zealand one is beginning to lose its printing so maybe that will be one of the sacrificial ones. It’s six years old now. I’ll figure it out when I get home.
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