Eric Kendrick was first to leave on a commercial flight towards the north. He had a mountain of excess baggage that needed to go with him to Upernavik, where he will be installing one of our GPS sites. The folks at Air Greenland had been warned we were coming, but even so it took a moment or two of concerned glances and nervous foot shuffling before forms were produced and signed and Eric could be on his way.
An hour or so later Dana and Abel carted off to a military flight towards the south and Narsarssuaq. They will be based from there while installing four more GPS sites. Marian Okal was shuttled up to Thule airbase where she will field equipment out to Eric as he makes his way up the west coast.
Thomas Nylen and I are here until tomorrow. We helped everyone on their way, before I made the mistake of talking to the TV press. I feel like I messed it up with "ums" and "ehs?" and I think my Scottish accent made it a little difficult for some of the stuff that I was trying to say to come across. Some of the questions also took me by suprise, so we'll have to see what comes of it. So much for being prepared, and I should have known I would have to convert all the metric measurements I knew into old-fashioned imperial, miles, yards, feet and inches.... I don't know, the most advanced country in the world apparently. And it still does things in pounds, feet and inches.
The print media where also around. Although one chap asked "where in Greenland are you going today?"
"Nowherrrr" I replied (with a difficult to reproduce in text, rolled "arrr").
"Nowhur?" the gentleman replied.
"Nowherrrr!" I emphatically said.
"Nowerr?" he kindly checked. "Where in Greenland is that?"
"No Wharrrr" I said as clearly as I could.
"Could you spell it?" he asked.
"EN - OH - DUBLEYOU - AITCH - EEE - ARRRRR - EEE" I spelled.
"N - O - W - H - E - R - E" he repeated for a split second "Aha!" ....Clarity.
After even the media left (and the German group from TU Dresden too, although I missed saying goodbye to both them and to Dana and Abel unfortunately) it was just Thomas and I left here.
We went for lunch (musk oxen and local shrimp) and repacked some of our gear for shipping by Twin Otter to Kulusuk a day after we get there. The De Havilland Twin Otter is a light short take-off and landing aircraft that we use a lot in Antarctica. We'll use it a bit here too.
We then went through some more of our logistics planning before going for a short walk to where the local river channels in to a gorge. You can see photos of some of the places I am talking about if you open this link in Google Earth. The power of the river was deeply deeply impressive. The sediment-laden water comes off the ice cap full of sediment before rushing down to this small settlement. Its a chocolate-milk coloured looking body of water that must be erosive as anything. When its channeled into the gorge, probably due to some weak fracture plane in the bedrock by the looks of the nearby gneiss cliffsides, it starts boiling and raging and just spraying everywhere. Anyone who fell in there would be a goner. Someone apparently tried to kayak it. The operative words are tried and the inference is once. Apparently the bridge over the gorge is posthumously named after him.
We then went back for what, after two days, seems to be an average Greenlandic dinner, meat and potatoes. I am not complaining, but I am looking forward to the Thai restaurant that is rumoured to exist in Tasilliq! Now I am sitting in my comfy dorm style room, opposite the bathrooms (which have an omminous "inhalation hazard" sticker on the door,) on the second floor of the KISS building. Not everyone here is dressed like Gene Simmons, but the staff of the Kangerlussuaq International Science Support building are, to be frank, brilliant.
The view from my room is, in the background, deeply impressive, with sheer gneiss cliffs, an unexplored climbers dream I expect, shining in the fading light of the day. The foreground (20 meters away) is a less lovely boxy building, a local jail.
This place is definitely full of contrasts.