I opened the curtains of my room and… “Oh man…there is that eternal sea mist again”… or something along that line. Maybe the word eternal had been a less poetic replacement. I saw a Groundhog Day scenario evolving and me waking up every single day of the remaining year opening those darn curtains and then staring 1st desperately but later with nothing more than an empty glaze into the thick impenetrable mist. Morning after morning after morning, never able to leave Aasiaat again…and if I somehow succeeded to hijack a plane and force someone to fly me out, I would wake up in that bare, grey room again and everything achieved would be undone.

The spot where the island had been yesterday evening was covered in a thick impenetrable blanket of sea mist.

The Wandelgek noticed he was still in his room in the barracks and had not been transported to his room in the Sjömandshjemmet. He definitely was not in a Groundhog Day! Phew.

That meant he was still sane.

But than he realized that this mist was what prevented him from leaving Greenland yesterday and if anything, that mist seemed even thicker today…

But slowly he started to build up hope in his mind. Now Air Greenway would be better prepared. Maybe they even installed devices into those planes that could navigate through that mist.

He walked to the Sømandshjemmet to have a free breakfast for which he had received a coupon the previous day at the airport.

He noticed a Narwhal tooth hanging on one of the walls of the restaurant.

The tought of a Narwhal being hunted for this tooth and then this tooth being converted into a harpoon to hunt more Narwhals was weird thought.

During breakfast The Wandelgek was informed that he should arrive later than planned at the airport because the planes would be delayed today.

After returning to the barracks, he waited until a cab would transport him and his backpack to the airport where he was expected at 11.

Outside the sky looked like:

No detectable improvement whatsoever.

The installation of a device in the planes, to navigate through, the mist had been idle hope. However, Air Greenland had been taking some other initiatives to try and get planes landing on Aasiaat airport today.

For this they had been delaying the start of planes coming from Ilulissat and they had given them extra fuel so they could circle longer in the area.

The previous day the mist had been quickly solving around 14.00 hours so the new tactic was to get planes arriving a bit previous to that hour, when the mist started to get less dense.

Weather reports that were briefed over by weather stations and by pilots of planes in the area informed us that 20 kilometers inland the air was clear blue and the mist was slowly dissolving just like it did yesterday.

Beneath is a map of the Aasiaat archipelago…

It was expected that the mist would be thin enough to enable air planes to land at about 14.00 hours.

The Wandelgek looked up at a Greenlandic flagg every 10 minutes too whether he could see the mist dissolve…

After a few hours the mist finally gave in and started to retreat…

…and then it finally happened…

… the 1st plane landed. But it was the plane to Nuuk so still not the one The Wandelgek needed to travel to Kangerlussuaq. Around 14.00 the Kangerlussuaq plane was able to land too…

The airport administrative employee that helped me told me that in Kangerlussuaq they had rebooked me on a plane leaving very late in the evening at about 23.30. This way The Wandelgek would arrive very early next morning in Copenhagen, where he had booked his internatiinal flight to Amsterdam in the afternoon. It was now very probable that he did not have to rebook that flight as well and that he could still spent a few hours in Copenhagen.

That was superb news.

The flight to Kangerlussuaq was not that long so he enjoyed the views…

The remaining mist was quickly gone when the plane started to fly and reached the mainland, leaving the archipelago behind.

Meanwhile reading a bit in the complimentary Air Greenland glossy in which there were articles in English and in Kalaalisut (Greenlandic).

Then the plane started to land at Kangerlussuaq airport…

There were still some hours to bridge before leaving Greenland for good. Because of the delays caused by the sea mist, Greenland Travel offered some surprises to spent the remaining time and I will describe the last hours in Greenland in my next blogpost

Conclusion: Despite the weather related delays, which could, should have been  and were expected by me as a traveller, I think Air Greenland and Greenland Travel did a great job in making the delayed time as pleasurable as possible, by arranging rebookings of flights, lunches, coupons fir dinner and breakfast at Sjömandshjemmet, rooms to stay the night, providing information and thinking of connections to other flights as well  and transfers from town to the airport. All free of charge. And the best 2 arrangements were still to come.

So I was really impressed and gratefull to everyone who worked on this.