Crossing the Arctic Circle: My Greenland Journey with Chimu Adventures

Greenland Had Always Felt a Little Too Far Away

Getting above that lucrative Arctic Circle has always been on my (very long) bucket list. My Instagram feed is often littered with the Northern Lights in Norway and Lapland, but Greenland always seemed to land in the “too far” bucket. Little did I know, a short 4-hour flight from Copenhagen hand me landing in Kangerlussuaq; where Chimu Adventure’s Ocean Albatross was waiting in the Fjords for us to meet her.  

As an intro to expedition cruising, I think I started at the top (sort of like when you fly Business and can never go back to Economy afterwards). It was the start of one of the most epic adventures yet.

My First Thought Was: It’s Cold

The cold that pierces through your Australian Jumpers quickly – solved with our provided Arctic Jackets we got to take home as keep sake (you’re about to see me in a red jacket everywhere). The cold was accompanied with a fully formed quiet. There was nothing. Not a bad nothing, an untouched nothing. The mountains rolled into each other as far as your eye could see, and you could only hear a very faint whisper of wind. It’s a dry terrain – until of course we boarded our first zodiac, ready to board.  

Getting Used to Expedition Life

I pictured our vessel to be less comfortable to some more traditional cruising I had experienced, based on the intensity of the voyages landscapes. But Ocean Albatros and their passenger focused Expedition Team were the best of the best. Ocean Albratos is a purpose-built polar expedition ship with an X-Bow design, which helps make sailing in rough seas more comfortable and quiet. There were only around 150 passengers on my sailing, which meant very few queues and easy logistics getting on and off the ship. That smaller passenger count is especially important in Antarctica, where landing regulations mean everyone has a much better chance of getting off the ship and experiencing each landing!! 

You Don’t Understand the Scale Until You’re There

I knew Greenland was going to have big icebergs. I’d seen the photos. I still wasn’t prepared for the scale of them…  and they just kept getting bigger and bigger. 

From the ship they were impressive, but being down at water level in a Zodiac was completely different. Suddenly you realise just how small you are next to them. The colours surprised me too. Some were bright white, others had these incredible deep blues running through them. 

There was also something about the sound, or sometimes the complete lack of it. You’d be sitting in this huge landscape with barely a sound around you, then hear the ice crack or shift somewhere in the distance. 

I took hundreds of photos, but this is one of those places where a photo never quite explains how big it all feels.

I Came for the Landscapes, But the People Stayed With Me Most

If you’d asked me before the trip what I was most excited about, I would have said the landscapes and photography without hesitation. It was the only thing I really knew about Greenland to be honest – I didn’t expect the people to be such a big part of my experience. 

We visited small communities where life looks very different from home. Winters here can mean long periods of polar night, yet this is simply home and people make it work. What stayed with me most was how generous people were with us. We had tea and cakes in traditional Greenlandic Homes, played soccer with communities of less than 100 people and ate traditional meals including seal and whale blubber.  

The icebergs were what got Greenland onto my bucket list. The people are a big part of what I’ll remember about it. 

The Story behind Greenlandic Houses

One of the first things you notice when you arrive in Greenland’s smaller towns and settlements is the colour. Against these huge grey mountains, dark water and often fairly moody skies are little clusters of red, blue, yellow and green houses. 

I originally thought the colours were just there to brighten things up, but traditionally they actually meant something. Different colours were used to identify what a building was for. Red was commonly associated with churches and commercial buildings, yellow with hospitals and medical staff, green with communications, and blue with fishing and industry. These days the rules aren’t so strict, but the colourful houses have become such a recognisable part of Greenland. 

There was something I loved about seeing these tiny pockets of colour surrounded by such an enormous landscape. Some of the communities we visited had fewer than 100 people, yet from the water you could spot their colourful houses tucked underneath the mountains before you could make out almost anything else. 

Kayaking Between Icebergs Was Every Bit as Good as It Sounds

I knew before I left that I wanted to kayak in Greenland. What I didn’t quite appreciate was how different the ice would feel when you were sitting basically at water level beside it. 

We kayaked through completely still water with icebergs and smaller pieces of ice scattered around us, called the Brush. Without the sound of the Zodiac engine, everything became incredibly quiet. You could hear the water against the kayak, pieces of ice moving and occasionally that distant cracking sound (called carving) that makes you very aware that the landscape around you is constantly changing. 

It also gives you a completely different perspective on the size of the icebergs and glaciers. From the ship they’re enormous, from a Zodiac they somehow look even bigger, but from a kayak you feel absolutely tiny. 

And yes, I was slightly terrified of tipping myself into Arctic water with a camera nearby. Thankfully, both me and the camera survived.