If you want to get up and close to icebergs, reindeer, seals, sheep, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and even a humpback whale. And have them all to yourselves.... Greenland is the place. Below are our top 100 photos and also some random tidbits I learned about the country.
Tidbits I did not know Greenland that I learned over our campfire.
#1: Greenland is part of Denmark. The Vikings (Erik the Red) established a sheep colony, then his son Liefer Erikson converted it over to Christianity. Denmark sends over income to the Greenland people, which has perhaps led to less productivity in its people.
#2: Caribou = reindeer. At least in Greenland. This is surprising to me since growing up my mom would tell me that Filipinos like to eat caribou tongue. But I guess in the Philippines caribou = ox.
#3: Inuit do hunt seal and whale and the national dish is suaasat, a soup made from seal, whale, or sometimes reinder. But with Greenpeace's Don't Kill Baby Seals and Don't Kill Whales, the Inuit hunt these guys a lot less.
#4: Back in the day, kayaks were custom built to fit exactly the size of the rider. They didn't have sea skirts, so the kayak needed to fit exactly around their waste.
#5: Also back in the day, if a male wanted to let a female know that he was interested in her, when she was in the big family boat paddling (and he was in his custom built single kayak), he would throw his harpoon at her paddle just when she was lifting it out of the water in the middle of a stroke. This would show that he was a sure shot with killing seals and could provide for her and her family.
#6: Killing seals back in the day meant getting a harpoon and waiting by an iceberg for a seal to show up, then having perfect skill to throw the harpoon and hit the seal. The seal would then dive deep, but the harpoon was tied to an intenstine that was blown up like a bag so that the seal wouldn't be able to dive too deep and the Inuit would know where the seal was. Eventually when the seal came up, the Inuit would clog it was a paddle.
#7: Tibitoks are (according to our guide Carmen) are Innuits (Eskimo is not used here) who leave their people and go into the mountains to get animal spiritual powers. When you meet a tibitok, you should take your clothes off and give it to the tibitok (this was after a few vodkas and wine glasses courtesy of the Russians and French, so not sure of the validity of this one).
#8: The Heidi bowl is one of the Top 10 most memorable NFL games of the century not because of the game itself but because of the conclusion that was never seen. The Raiders took on the NY Jets on November 17, 1968. With the Jets up by 3 with 65 seconds left, NBC switched away from the game to its scheduled programming - the movie Heidi - and TV viewers never saw the Raiders emerge victorious. Now why would this even come up on a kayaking trip in Greenland? Because when each nationality was representing their country by singing their national anthem (yes, Alex and I sang a very rocky scary pitched version of our national anthem), the Germans broke out in the song Heidi.
#1: Greenland is part of Denmark. The Vikings (Erik the Red) established a sheep colony, then his son Liefer Erikson converted it over to Christianity. Denmark sends over income to the Greenland people, which has perhaps led to less productivity in its people.
#2: Caribou = reindeer. At least in Greenland. This is surprising to me since growing up my mom would tell me that Filipinos like to eat caribou tongue. But I guess in the Philippines caribou = ox.
#3: Inuit do hunt seal and whale and the national dish is suaasat, a soup made from seal, whale, or sometimes reinder. But with Greenpeace's Don't Kill Baby Seals and Don't Kill Whales, the Inuit hunt these guys a lot less.
#4: Back in the day, kayaks were custom built to fit exactly the size of the rider. They didn't have sea skirts, so the kayak needed to fit exactly around their waste.
#5: Also back in the day, if a male wanted to let a female know that he was interested in her, when she was in the big family boat paddling (and he was in his custom built single kayak), he would throw his harpoon at her paddle just when she was lifting it out of the water in the middle of a stroke. This would show that he was a sure shot with killing seals and could provide for her and her family.
#6: Killing seals back in the day meant getting a harpoon and waiting by an iceberg for a seal to show up, then having perfect skill to throw the harpoon and hit the seal. The seal would then dive deep, but the harpoon was tied to an intenstine that was blown up like a bag so that the seal wouldn't be able to dive too deep and the Inuit would know where the seal was. Eventually when the seal came up, the Inuit would clog it was a paddle.
#7: Tibitoks are (according to our guide Carmen) are Innuits (Eskimo is not used here) who leave their people and go into the mountains to get animal spiritual powers. When you meet a tibitok, you should take your clothes off and give it to the tibitok (this was after a few vodkas and wine glasses courtesy of the Russians and French, so not sure of the validity of this one).
#8: The Heidi bowl is one of the Top 10 most memorable NFL games of the century not because of the game itself but because of the conclusion that was never seen. The Raiders took on the NY Jets on November 17, 1968. With the Jets up by 3 with 65 seconds left, NBC switched away from the game to its scheduled programming - the movie Heidi - and TV viewers never saw the Raiders emerge victorious. Now why would this even come up on a kayaking trip in Greenland? Because when each nationality was representing their country by singing their national anthem (yes, Alex and I sang a very rocky scary pitched version of our national anthem), the Germans broke out in the song Heidi.
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