Greenland has been in recent news - warming Arctic seas, melting glaciers, the Trump administration expressing purchase interest and Denmark firmly responding with no interest to US acquisition of Greenland. Quite a lot information to view for this somewhat remote area.
We're planning a trip to Scoresbysund, in East Greenland. This natural sound is the longest fjord in the world, at about 215 miles (346,000 meters) in length, with a maximum depth of almost eight-tenths of a mile (1,300 meters). There is only one settlement in this area, Ittoqqortoormiit, which has about 450 inhabitants. We're still practicing our pronunciation of this Inuit settlement.
Our trip will be on a small (240feet/73meters long) expedition ship that carries a total of about 115 guests and crew. The ship has a Finnish ice rating of 1B, meaning the ship can travel through a maximum flat ice thickness of 1.5 feet or 50 centimeters.
If all goes according to plan, we hope to have a few nights to view the lights from Aurora Borealis. During the daylight hours, we should have about 12-13 hours of sunlight to view puffins, muskox, arctic fox, little aux, geese, elders, guillemots and terns. We might even see a few polar bears.
Before and after our expedition, we'll spend some time in Reykjavik, Iceland. This will be our second trip to Iceland and we'll probably limit our exploration to the Reykjavik.
We struggled a bit with selecting our air transportation. We finally settled on trying Iceland Air Saga Class seats from Seattle to Reykjavik and return. The seats are somewhat upright but at least the flight is only seven hours in duration. We picked up some compression socks to help circulation during the flight. These types of socks prevent deep vain thrombosis (DVT) and blood clots from forming in your legs during longer flights.
This trip could be our last polar adventure, though I admit personal interest in making one more trip to Antarctica. The majestic beauty and remoteness of the Antarctic area, variety of wildlife and opportunity to visit current and former research stations is quite attractive to me.
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