Voyage North - a photo essay: (11) Maniitsoq

Very early in the morning we anchored in the bay off the town of Maniitsoq. With a population of around two and a half thousand, it's the sixth largest town in Greenland. The arrangements were last-minute so the town hadn't been able to prepare for our visit - whilst some of the town officials knew we were coming, most of the people were very surprised to wake up and see a large ship in their bay. This meant that, for instance, the carvers and other crafts people hadn't set up goods for us to buy, which was a pity for their economy - it felt very important to me that we spent money in these small towns, not just arrive, gawp at the natives, and leave.

We were greeted by the now-familiar sight:

We started going ashore from around 7am (already full daylight, of course). An official had made copies for us of the town map. The harbour cafe was open, but nothing else stirred until 9am or later - the town museum, ten minutes walk from the centre, opened at 10am and contained an excellent ethnographic display together with a history of the settlement of the town.

This town, perhaps most among those we visited, had the air of a somewhat ramshackle frontier town. The harbour café served excellent coffee, and (perhaps surprisingly) had the option of lactose-free milk. But the furniture and fixtures were all made out of pallets and packing cases:

This is, in fact, really sensible upcycling. There are few trees in Greenland, and precious few natural resources beyond fish, seals, whales and reindeer. Everything else has to be imported - so it arrives on pallets and in packing cases, providing a regular source of timber.

Later in the morning I was to experience the import culture: I needed some more cash in the local currency (Danish kroner), and there was no ATM in the town; the post office referred me to the supermarket to get 'cashback' on a card purchase. I made my way there and checked that they could offer this - the answer was, 'If there's enough money in the till' . . . implying that there might not be. I didn't really need anything, but had to make purchase to use my card. I asked if they had any gluten-free products and was taken to a large display of fresh bread, including GF loaves, but explained that I wanted biscuits, or something like that. Although this Inuit woman's English was fairly competent, this puzzled her, until I tried 'cookies' - success! The west coast of Greenland is easily accessible to tourist and visitor traffic from the east coasts of Canada and the northern USA - Americanised English is the norm, especially as there were also US air bases in the country during WW2. I was taken to the shelves of biscuits and snacks and saw for myself the nature of importation - all the goods I would expect to find in a supermarket at home, but in Danish language packaging. And the prices were more UK than Denmark, when I did the calculation - that's UK-Waitrose rather than UK-Lidl! So I picked up some chocolate biscuits, took them to the till, and asked if I could have the equivalent of £100 in cash. She opened the till . . . and said no, there wasn't enough, but she could offer me the equivalent of £50 - fair enough: that's the maximum you get for cashback in a UK supermarket, and it was very early in the morning!

I walked around the town for a while. Here are the old church (top) and the new church. All the towns have this pairing of two Lutheran churches - the first dating from the time of European settlement, the second built when the population became too large for the original building. Many of the new churches are not only large worship spaces but also community centres and activity hubs, and often are built on high ground, visible from all over the settlement.

Behind the new church was a small area with flowers:

This was striking, because most of the town looked quite bare, utilitarian and rather scruffy. While I was taking these photos, a Inuit woman came out of a nearby building to say hallo. She had very good English and was interested to meet visitors. She explained that she was a staff member at the children's centre (preschool provision); she worked in this town but actually came from Qatortoq, further south, about which she was very enthusiastic - a beautiful town, with many flowers, much prettier than this place. I told her that we would be going to Qatortoq later in the trip, and she was delighted.

Elsewhere in the town there were very run-down apartment blocks, looking very poor and uncared-for. There was a sports hall, with this interesting graphic on the wall:

Unlovely but necessary was this large oil storage container near the harbour:

Nearby was a large fish-exporting plant and a local fish market - so, compared to Tasiilaq, Maniitsoq was making more of its marine resources. After visiting the museum I decided to return to the ship - there really wasn't much else to see. The town has more tourist potential as a hiking base for people staying for longer - there are many picturesque valleys and gorges accessible by foot from the town.

I spent the afternoon on the deck of our moored ship in the bay, whale-watching.

There must have been good feeding grounds in the bay, as there were many humpback and sperm whales feeding, and diving, showing their flukes. I wasn't able to take photos of them - they were very distant and it required constant scanning with binoculars to spot the blows, track them, and wait for the dive. At a distance, through the binoculars, the two species are distinguishable by the light (humpback) and dark (sperm) undersides of their flukes:

At tea time, later that afternoon, I heard from someone who had returned in a later tender boat which had been nearly swamped by a humpback whale surfacing and breaching very close to the boat - the whole display: breaching, flipper slapping . . . I found this image online of a similar event, which gives an idea of the experience . . .  except that our boats are smaller than this one! An exciting but rather startling experience.

We left late in the afternoon, heading further north. The weather had been murky and overcast all day, but as we left the cloud started to clear (a pattern we saw often!) and we had the best view all day of the mountains and the icecap: