August 19, 2023 Qaqortoq, Greenland

Zuiderdam was approaching Qaqortoq at 6:30 a.m. in a fog. The fog horn was sounding every two minutes. The horn speaker is located on the smoke stack above the Deck 11 basketball court at the back third of the ship. The fog horn is barely audible down here on Deck 1 toward the front of the ship. At 7 a.m. the temperature was 6° C, hardly any wind at NNW 3 km/hour. The visibility was about 50 metres. We climbed up to the Explorations Central Crow’s Nest on Deck 10 to find the coordinates of the approach as the ship cautiously moved toward the town. North 60°40’13” and West 46° 3’28”. Then we went to Lido Market for breakfast. There were lots of empty tables.

Today Zuiderdam was scheduled to be anchored by 8 a.m. and the tender boats were launched for the tendering operation to take people to the Qaqortoq pier. However, due to the fog, at 8:15 a.m. we were still carefully edging into the harbour. Tender ticket allocation began at 8 a.m. The Island Princess was already anchored and Zuiderdam needed to navigate carefully to her anchorage. There are no planned tours arranged by the ship. Originally the date to visit Qaqortoq was July 30, but the port was switched with Nanortalik which would have been the port today. Within two weeks of the change, in mid June, the shore excursions that passengers had booked were switched to the appropriate towns, although we had to phone to find that it would take time. No email was sent to people on the switched tours.

On July 23, after the start of the cruise, passengers with excursions booked in Qaqortoq received a letter in the mail rack, that all excursions were cancelled and the refund was already in our account when we checked. No reason was given. However, the Island Princess was in port today and may have booked most of the tours for this date so when we were switched to this date for the Qaqortoq stop the Princess ship had already taken all the tours the town could supply.

Qaqortoq was formerly known as Julianehåb and was founded in 1774. Qaqortoq is nestled in a fjord system. The population is about 3,100. The main industry is fishing with shrimp being a major product. Within a five minute walk of the tender pier is the Fish Market. It is a small area covered with a canopy and two tables of freshly caught fish on ice are displayed daily on one of the two tables. There is a scale to weigh the fish. Sometimes there may be samples of the delicacy of raw blubber. Raw blubber is NOT recommended by our cruise director, Tjalling, who described the taste as like WD-40 and the texture of a bicycle tire. Tourism is increasing with more cruise ships stopping, this year between May 31 and September 22 the town is expecting 34 cruise ships.

We gathered our jackets and had donned our insect repellant infused clothes, although there were only an occasional small fly in the three hours that we explored Qaqortoq. We went to Billboard Onboard to collect a tender ticket. The first tender was just being prepared for guests. We waited less than ten minutes and were on the first tender out. We stepped on the Qaqortoq pier before 9 a.m. The fog was still quite dense. You could just see the Zuiderdam and did not know that the Island Princess cruise ship was anchored a little further behind it.

Qaqortoq has many colourful 19^th century buildings and newer ones. The museum is housed in the former trading post manager’s house which was built in 1804. Toward the end of the 19^th century, it had guest rooms on the second floor. Across from it is another museum building built in the late 19^th century, a yellow house. The colours of the buildings used to have a meaning. Red was commercial buildings. Black was police. Yellow was Health buildings, hospital or pharmacy. Blue was fisherman’s homes. Green was communication buildings.

There was a crew member handing out town maps that had been printed from Google maps. It did not have many street names on it and did not prove very helpful. We asked directions to Lake Tasersuag to find its hiking trail. We found the town’s Memorial Fountain, with whales at its top, which was built between 1929 and 1932. We crossed a small bridge across a stream which had small rapids in near it. Beside the stream was the red wooden Church of the Saviour which was built in 1832. When the village grew larger, a second church was built in 1963 on higher rock. The construction material for Gertrud Rasch’s Church was concrete. In the bell tower are two bells.

As we walked we passed a grocery store and a café, it was too early for either to be open yet. It was still foggy but the visibility was about 300 meters.

There is an open air “art gallery” of rocks carved by leading Nordic artists in 1993, 1994 and 2000. There are 30 of the carved rocks of varying sizes scattered around the town site. We found one on the walk to the lake and others scattered around the community. Near Lake Tasersuag was a large soccer field, quite visible in the fog. The path along the lake looked uneven and narrow. We elected to explore the town and started to climb uphill along a street, passing the three storey yellow hospital and a grocery store. After half an hour going higher and higher, finding no streets going down. We retraced our route back to the main street.

We discovered some more of the stone carvings. Closer to the waterfront we saw a walkway with some of the stone carvings including some that the Terrells mentioned in their port talk. Outside the Information and souvenirs store, there were craft tables where local Inuit residents were selling handicrafts. In the store one item was priced at 90 Danish Krone which converted there to 12 Euros or 14 US dollars. There was a sign nearby with a couple of Greenland words – Aluu means Hello; Qujanaq means Thank you; Takuss means Bye. We found some more stone carvings and checked the Fish Market and there were enough fish to cover the two tables. Suddenly the fog lifted so we walked back to Lake Tasersuag to take clear photos.

Once back at the tender pier there was still some cloud hanging low in the area. We could see the Island Princess anchored near the Zuiderdam. It was three hours since we had arrived on shore and the tender was waiting for passengers. We had walked 7.5 kilometres.

We were back on the ship by noon, There was the usual exit from the tender boat onto the platform then up a set of stairs to Deck A. A line to have your key card read and the scanner conveyer belt to place your phones, backpacks etc. like airport security, then walk through the body scanner and up the stairs to our stateroom on Deck 1.

We ate lunch in Lido Market. There was an average amount of people, but getting a table was easy. We watched as a fog bank creeped toward the ship obscuring the view of the town as we returned to the stateroom. Five minutes later we looked out our window and the sun was brightly shining and there was no sign of the fog. Larry took photos of some of Qaqortoq’s colourful buildings.

We spent the afternoon reading, first on loungers in the shade on Deck 3 wrapped in blankets out of the wind, then on Deck 10 in Explorations Central Crow’s Nest with coffees on the table next to us. We got lucky and found two empty lounge chairs with a view of the town. At 4 p.m. today it was the Block Party. Passengers were encouraged to take a glass from their room and go into their corridor to meet their neighbours, receive some wine from their room steward and say hello to the captain and a crew member. People lingered for almost an hour. The captain visited every corridor on all eight decks with staterooms or suites.

Then it was time to meet Cee Kaye and Brad for dinner. They had explored the town this morning and relaxed by the pool and read in the afternoon.

Tonight’s entertainment was comedian Sid Davis, the second of three shows.

Total steps were 21,351 and 49 flight of stairs (or three meter elevation increases going uphill)