Today we went into the heart of the Cape Breton Island - through some narrow passages we sailed to the little town of Baddeck and it felt a little bit like cruising on some inland-lakes as we had no waves and no view of the open sea at all. Baddeck turned out to be very different from the other sofar visited settlements in Canada: No small and isolated fishervillage with just a few houses on rocky cliffs, but instead a busy little town with a lot of souvenir- and handycraftstores as well as beautyful houses at the seafront. It is a nice place that already attracted summer-residents 100 years ago. The most famous one was the known inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The very interesting museum not only tells about his work related to the telephone, but also about his astonishing experiments in the era of early aviation. We could also see the remains of the once fastest speedboat of the world - Bells strange hydrofoil HD-4.

Back to Newfoundland again.

The Gros Morne National Park really offers some scenic coastlines and breathtaking mountainvalleys - but today longlasting rainfalls kept the enthusiasm about it a little bit low. We went to the famous Tablelands, were old rocks from the earths mantle and long gone ocean floors are lying on the surface. They are full of metals and not very fertile, so one could easily see the difference in vegetation.

In the interesting visitors centre we learned more about the area and its special geology. In addition we had good time to stroll through the nice village of Woody Point or hike into the nearby forests - beautyful coloured in green, yellow and red ...

We went north again - just a little bit - and made our landfall at the coast of Labrador. It offered us a scenic landscape with autumn-coloured woods, wild salmon-rivers and rough seashores. Just a handful of small settlements is spred along thise remote coastline.

The little village of Red Bay with app. 260 inhabitants had 3 museums informing about the basque whaling-era, when hundreds of men went over here each year to hunt for the whales in this waters. This period is long gone, and so we could enjoy a lot of whale-sightings today.

After a calm 2-day-crossing with a lot of lectures we today reached land again.

It was first a little bit rainy and foggy when we entered the little bay of St. Anthony through a very narrow entrance. But as the time went on it turned out to became a nice day with some sunshine as well and unbelievable warm temperatures - TShirt-weather again after all this greenlandic snowstorms ...

And as one of the highlights of the trip we were today able to visit L`Anse aux Meadows, the famous place where Helge Ingstad and his wife had found the remains of a viking settlement in the 60s and so proofed that Leif Erikson really made his way to "Vinland". Onboard the Fram we had their daughter Benedicte who was enthusiastic greeted by all the people working at the museum or in the reconstructed viking houses nearby - for as a teenager she had accompanied their parents for the excavations.

South Greenland turned out to be so different from the northwest - no snow, but green meadows! So entering the Eiriksfjord we all could realize why Erik the Red called his new land for Greenland. We visited his old farmplace Brattahlid where we enjoyed a lively performance about his adventures and familyproblems from one of his concubines - fallen out of time.

Others went on a small boatcruise to a nearby glacier where they could enjoy a lot of icebergs - amongst them one of the astonishing blueest icebergs ever to bee seen!

Than we turned our ship to follow from this historical place in the steps of Leif Erikson - the first one who ever crossed the nordic ocean and found Vinland or nowadays America.

Finally we made it!
We escaped from the long-lasting winter-weather as we crossed the 62th parallel on our way to the south and found ourselfes suddenly again surrounded by the good, old rain ...

The storm was still moving the ship and pushed us back in time, so we reached our todays destination - the abandoned mining settlement of Ivittuut - around 16:00 in the afternoon. Here we could stroll around in the remains of the village and the mining-buildings and look for small pieces of the here once processed kryolith. It was the hugest deposit of kryolith in the whole world and brought wealth to Greenland, as it was used to produce aluminium and was mostly shipped to the USA. A very nice museum showed a lot of minerals and explained about the history of this place.

Today we visited the capital city of Greenland - Nuuk.

And the Fram brought the winter to southern Greenland, for it started with the snowfall during the night - the same weather we had experienced the last ten days more up to the north. But down here the people were not expecting such an early winter and chaos came to town: the busses had not changed to wintertires and stayed at home, as a thick layer of app. 15 cm snow and ice covered the streets! It seemed a little bit strange to see "Arcticers" caught and confused by snowfall, just like in every other middeleuropean town when winter starts ...

That changed our plans for sightseeing-trips and shuttle-busses, so we had to walk into town with our local guides and hired some 4-wheel-cabs as a substitute for the Bus-shuttle. So everybody was still able to get to the town and also to visit the old colonial part of Nuuk, where the National Museum is located. This offered a really well done exhibition about the old Inuit way of living as well as a newly set up way of presenting one of their most well-known items - the greenlandic mummies from about 1475.

We left Nuuk in the late afternoon and had to head out for the open sea where we ran into a nice storm lasting the whole night. It kept the most people to stay in their cabins ...

Leaving the long Kangerlussuaq-Fjord the Fram turned southward again, finishing by this the long season of western and northern Greenland for this year. We had some time on our way and visited the Evighetsfjorden just a little bit south of the Kangerlussuaq.

The weather stayed as the days before, in fact it added some extra heavy snowfall, so that some AB`s were allways busy to get rid of that stuff and took good use of their showels ...

We left the fjord during lunchtime and started with our lectures to inform the new passengers about such arctic things as ice, glaciers, Inuit and vikings. And we headed on to the south, to escape from this serious winter!

Kangerlussuaq - airportday. For the last time this year we wave goodbye to our guests here, disembarking them in snowy winterweather. Than we wait at the airport for the new ones to come. Once in a while smaller snowstorms cover the airstripe with a new layer of white, and the tractors hurry out to get it clear again for the next planes to come.

The last group mainly liked this real greenlandic, arctic weather wich showed them the islands harsh nature and gave a small glimpse of greenland in wintertime. For the new ones it will be an unexpected start for this viking-route, but at least we will just travel in southern directions ...

Ilulissat - for sure one of the highlights of the whole trip. The city named after all the magnificent icebergs drifting out from the Icefjord into the Discobay, starting their northbound journey towards the Smithsound-Region, before turning south again and travelling additional thousands of miles along the shores of Baffinland and Labrador ...

It was more or less snowing throughout the whole day, but we were lucky enough to had all excursions taking place, so our passengers could enjoy the scenic Icefjord by hike, by boat and even by helikopter.

And what most people never realize - a slightly clouded sky gives a much better impression of the the icebergs: On sunny days the ice is just "boring" white, but with some clouds all the various sorts of blueish colours are getting visible. So it was in fact a perfect day to take some real spectacular shots of the most impressing sights of greenland - the icebergs!

Almost a seaday - quite a distance to cover until we reached our todays destination, the glacier Eqip Sermia. So, while sailing through the beautyful Vaigat Sound, we had good time to entertain the guests with a whole lot of lectures - so they learned about greenlandic vegetation, the old ways of hunting for delicious food like "Giviaq" or "Mataq" and as well about the greenlandic situation in a modern world.

In the late afternoon we went ashore and had some time to stroll through the tundra and enjoy the view on the nearby located glacier. It was mostly snowing a little bit, but it was calm and so not getting too cold. But in the evening you could watch the watersurface starting to freeze ...

Back on the ship it was BBQ-time, taking the advanced season into consideration, it was not longer celebrated ashore but in the warm comfort of our cosy ship.

In the morning we made our way through the Umanak Fjord and it was really a spectacular sight to see: many think that fjord to be one of the most scenic of whole greenland - with the steep Nussuaq Peninsula on the one side and the rugged peaks of the Wegener Peninsula on the other side. And today this beautyful landscape was all covered with a thin layer of fresh snow, all down to the shoreline.

This added some difficulty to our tradionell Santa-Claus-Hike, but we made, it just took some extra-time.

And in the evening - as the highlight of the week for all expedition-team - we once again visited our nice friends in Ukkusissat. They had coffee, tea and cakes prepared in their community-house and later they visited us onboard the FRAM and showed our passengers dances, songs and their colourful national costumes. An interesting evening and we had much fun! To sorry it was the last time for a long period ...

We reached Qeqertarsuaq a little bit later than usual - due to bunker until the middle of the last night - but that was well done, for we got sunshine in the afternoon. So a lot of guests participated in our hike to the valley of the winds and enjoyed the beautyful scenery. Quite a few icebergs were stranded in the bay, so the view was really great, especially on the way back. Once in a while small clouds filled the air with snow - that added a touch of greenlandic winter our experience.

Sisimiut - it`s getting dark now, but we still wait for our place at the pier ... went ashore with our Polar Circle Boats today, as a greenlandic freighter occupied our position. But as we have the urgent need of some shiploads of provisions, we wait patiently for our time to come!

The weather was a pleasant mix from nasty cold snowstorms and brilliant light over the city - beautyful with the snowcovered mountains behind ...