Today we lost. And it started so well. Up at 7am, misty as anything. No view, no mountain, couldn't even see the airport. Another day of waiting for the weather to cooperate in Kulusuk. After a couple of days, there's not much to do in Kulusuk. But a Welshman and a Scotsman in the dining room of the hotel told us just to wait a bit, that the sun would burn off the mist in only a couple of hours. Before we knew it we started to see small patches of blue sky. Maybe today wasn't going to be a wash-out after all.

By 10am the airport was receiving flights from Iceland. The hordes of Chinese tourists were pleased, as were we, as now we had a chance to go and do something! We loaded up the helicopter to head north - the northern sites being our priority just now as the equipment is already staged there. Abbas had managed to sort out an extra rifle so now we could more saftely leave someone at the fuel cache during ferrying runs. We were quite nervous flying north. The clouds were still around the mountain tops and the mist was pushing in from the east at lower levels. If the fjords clouded out then we wouldn't be able to see the fuel cache and then the day's mission would be stuffed.

Thankfully we were cloud-free at ground level all the way to the fuel cache at Tugtilip (66 22' N, 35 07' W for all you Google Earthers) where the icebergs were an even more spectacularly green-blue today. We loaded up the helo with the previously cached equipment and headed inland for our site at Kongs Prins Fredericks Bjerg. Even ten minutes into the flight it was obvious that we were going home. My heart sank. Not again. Not another scratched mission. Back we went to Tugtillip, dumped the gear again and headed for Kulusuk. Nobody said a word on the way back. Maybe I should use something like Morrisey or something similarly morbid and depressing for the theme tune to this trip? I started second guessing myself - should we have gone south, is this site too high or too far inland? I still haven't answered either of these gnawing questions.

Consolation prize is that instead of getting off the helo at Kulusuk we came farther south to Angmassalik. And what a difference a change of scene and scale makes. The hotel is at the top of a hill that is steep, as steep as the road my parents live on in Scotland, and maybe even then some. The view is over the pretty little town, the houses are dotted here and there, clinging colourfuly to the mountain side. There's a football pitch at the bottom of the slope that the hotel sits upon, and right now at 9:30 at night they have a game going in full swing. I count a good 40 kids playing, so 11 a-side it ain't. There's one solitary but huge iceberg in the bay that is turning dusky blue in the fading light.

There's lots of hikes and other things to distract me from my dissertation around here as well. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be good to the north — we need to get more done. I've moved the site we were aiming for a bit farther to the southwest, but the topography gets really high, more than 3000m if we go too far to the south. We need to get a site as close to the ice sheet as possible, to act like the end of a lever, with Pilgupik at the other end. Moving the site should make it logistically easier and hopefully keep us from going up into the clouds.

We went to the supermarket before dinner and it is just like the ones at home, except you can buy guns just inside the door and flat-screen TVs upstairs. There were several other stores in the town too and we wandered around a bit, past the hospital and schools. My only problem here is that I need new contact lens fluid and have to order it from Denmark... My last bottle got squashed opened on the plane from New York to Greenland and I lost most of the contents. I need my contacts to wear my sunglasses. Not quite figured out how thats going to work yet. Also, my cell phone doesn't work here, even though I was promised by the telecom folks at home, and here, that it would... Minor worries on the larger scale of things. We're quite far behind now. I hope for better weather tomorrow, although as the sun goes down I can see the mist rolling in again.