GOOD BY AIRCRAFT AND HELLO FRAM

GOOD BY AIRCRAFT AND HELLO FRAM:

It was a welcome task to stretch our legs after the long and cramped flights. We arrived at the Kangerlussuaq airport under clear blue skies and headed for the buses that will take us on introductory tours of the region before heading to the FRAM.

The airfield is quite large as it was developed in early 1942 as a re-fueling site for World War II aircraft being flown from the U. S. via Canada to Great Britain. At present this airfield is the main international air terminal for Greenland. Here we boarded buses and some of us went to the glacier front of the Greenland ice-cap while others of us went on a tundra safari.

 Eventually the buses drove down the long gravel road to the wharf where we unloaded and learned to put on our orange lifejackets. The final leg of our journey to the FRAM was a Polarcirkel boat ride out to the FRAM, as she rested comfortably at anchor in the fjord. We will become quite familiar with these sturdy boats as they are the craft that will take us ashore when the FRAM visits the small villages that do not have docks that would allow the FRAM to tie-up alongside.

On-board the FRAM lines we turned in our passports to the ships purser and we were assigned our cabins and registered in the ships computer system. While on-board the FRAM we will not need our wallets or our money or our credit cards. Our new ships identification card acts as the key to our cabin door and even allows us to shop at the ships store.

Our luggage was outside our cabins and we had little time to unpack as the mandatory safety drill was held and we learned the location of our lifeboat stations. After the drill it was dinnertime and we were underway Southwest in the 170km or 103mi long Sondre Stromfjord.

The sun was still shining, brightly illuminating the small green mosses and lichens on the scarred rock walls of the fjord. 

                                        Captains welcome at the Observation Lounge "Qilak".