We arrived bright and early at the small port of Kangerlussuaq. A port so small that even the Ocean Majesty had to anchor. It is mainly a supply dock for anything needed in the area and for those people living and working at the airport. That is basically the only thing that is there, the airport. Built in 1941 by the US Air force, it played an important part in the Second World War and later during the cold war. It now belongs to the Greenlandic autonomic authority and is the only airport in Greenland big enough to accommodate Boeings 747’s.

Kangerlussuaq means Great Fjord in Greenlandic and when going with the bus from the seaport to the airport you drive for 20 minutes along the fjord. The little port is at the end of the deep-water part and the ship had to spent most of the night travelling through the fjord to get there. The end is very shallow with approx 5 miles of it falling dry during low tide. The airport is located at the very end, so planes coming in and taking off, are flying through the fjord with the mountains on either side.

Page and Moy has two charter planes coming to this place. One from Manchester and one from London-Gatwick. I went back with the Gatwick plane as it easier to get back home via London. Transport in England is mainly North South and getting across from East to West is a big challenge. So I left my wife on the Ocean Majesty and returned home after 10 days. I will see Lesley again in late September when she joins me for one of the Canadian Maritime cruises from Montreal on the Veendam.

Transport from the port is done by school buses, which means that you cannot do a change over of guests when the schools are open in the towns on the coast. Luggage is taken on and off the ship by barge and then it goes by truck to the airport. You leave your suitcase outside you cabin and you will get it back at the final airport that you are travelling to. Hand luggage is restricted to the same regulations as anywhere else in the world, and a lot of our guests had forgotten, although being told, that you are not allowed to have anything over 100 ml. in your hand luggage, so a lot of tax free bottles bought on board had to be left behind.

I found Greenland fascinating and as I do not like the cold I was very happy that we had 10 days of glorious sunshine and no wind. The towns are still un-spoiled by tourism and that makes a nice difference from where I normally sail. It is not a place to visit with a large cruise ship. Apart from Prinz Christians Sund and Nuuk, the towns along the coast can really only accommodate small number of visitors at one time.

You have to be really lucky with the weather. It can blow and rain, with freezing temperatures, even in mid summer. But fascinating it is. This time the only rain I saw was when arriving back home. It rained all the time, when I travelled home from Gatwick.

My Veendam blogs will start again on September 10th. I am rejoining the Veendam on 9th September at New York, when we start a number of Canadian Maritime cruises to Montreal.

This was an afternoon stop. Again a little village on the edge of a fjord. With a population of around a 1000 it main source of income is the fishing industry. Tourism is slowly coming but there is hardly any infrastructure for it, and the sightseeing buses are those not in use for the regular bus services. However they do cherish their history and there is an open air museum with a 18th century church, a peat house, a house dedicated to the history of coffee drinking in Denmark and a house that shows the history of the colonisation of the area and the development. Coffee drinking is an important part of Danish culture and going around to the neighbours for coffee in the morning was and is still an integral part of the social fabric of the community. So we saw a plethora of coffee cans, coffee grinders, variations in coffee beans and all that comes with the art of drinking a good cup of coffee. Very nostalgic was the display of childerens books published by the Danish coffee houses. With each pack of coffee you got a picture that had to go in the book and the challenge was to get the book complete. I remember myself doing that with series of birds, ships and other topics that came with my father’s tobacco in Holland. A lively exchange system must have been in place among the children in order to try and get their collections complete.

Tours mainly consist of walking tours around the town with a guide and there is a panoramic bus tour. I escorted one of the walking tours that was led by an Inuit girl.
A highlight of this walking tour is a kayak demonstration. With the arrival of motorboats, the use of traditional kayaking has been declining. However in the 1980’s young people took kayaking up as a sport and there are now yearly Greenland championships. There are roughly a 1000 enthusiasts, which is considerable taking into account the total population of 40000 in the whole of Greenland. The demonstration consisted of showing how a kayaker protected itself against being hit by an iceberg, being swamped by a diving Whale or being pulled over while trying to pull in a seal or walrus. The main trick in most cases was to roll over, keep the kayak between you and the iceberg and surface again at a distance. So here we saw a guy rolling over in freezing cold water time after time. Rolling left, rolling right, rolling with the peddle, rolling without the peddle, with gear on the kayak, without gear on the kayak, etc.etc. In the old days they had seal skin clothing to protect them and the kayaks were made from whalebones and sealskin. Now the kayaker wore a wet suit and the kayak is made out of wood and canvas covering.

After visiting the open-air museum, our tour ended with listening to an Inuit choir. Apart from some local songs, they also sang Silent Night Holy Night in Greenlandic
With the request to us to sing along. Now is my Greenlandic not what it used to be, as was with most of the others in the audience, so we politely refused.

We had to anchor today, as the dock was taking by the local supply boat, which was a big brute of a North Sea Oil Rig supplier with an ice bow and so could service the community in summer and winter. The ships tenders docked at a floating platform, which rose and fell with the water movement, so boarding and leaving the tender was a bit of a tricky affair.

The ship sailed at 6 pm. to cover the final leg of the voyage to Kangerlussuaq (pronounce Kanga-lu-sak) of 152 miles, where we will all disembark tomorrow morning.

20 Aug. Llulissat and Godhavn/QeQetarsuaq.

We were supposed to arrive at 7 am, so Lesley had to get up at 6 to be ready for dispatching the tours. Our cabin is right over the engine and when around seven we were not there and the engines stopped, we knew something was amiss.
Although the sun was brightly shining, the wind had picked up, wind force six to seven, which caused a swell to run. However the wind also kept the icebergs confined near Llulissat harbour, causing the ice pilot to advise the captain to stay out. There would not be enough room to anchor and as some of the icebergs were larger then the ship it was not a good idea to be in their way, as they could drift towards the ship due to the wind.

Thus time for plan B. Going to Godhavn on a little island in Disko Bay, another 45 miles up the coast. Godhavn, which mean Good harbour or sheltered port, has approx. 1000 people living there and was originally set up as a trading post and Christian centre by the Danes in 1773. The native name is Qeqetarsuaq (pronounce kwe-kwe-tar-su-ak). I was a bit disappointed as they had advertised that Llulissat had the biggest souvernirshop in the whole of Greenland, and I wanted to see what “big” was in Greenlandic terms. So now I have to forgo that cultural experience. The guests will be disappointed as well as Llulissat is the best place to see icebergs, they are much larger then the ones near Narsaq or those we saw last night at the Eqip Glacier.

Indeed Godhavn was a sheltered harbour being an inlet in the form of a natural Rock circle with a small entrance. We entered the port around 11.30 and found that a fishing boat had taken the prime anchorage. As the captain was not comfortable with staying on the engines in the harbour itself we went outside again and floated a mile off the port. The sun was shining brightly and the high mountains shielded the port from the wind. Once again a glorious day.

As the town is located on an island in Disko Bay, it is surrounded with big icebergs and one enormous one had stranded just outside the village. It was in process of falling apart there with large chunks of ice coming down. Apart from fishing and hunting, the town has a large Artic Research Station on top of the cliffs overlooking the village.

We saw a lot of wildlife, including pilot whales and humpback whales feeding near the ship. The town has a church in the form of an incomplete octagonal and it was the first one that I saw with a ships model. A kayak, hanging in the centre nave of the church. Most fishermen churches in the world have models hanging in the church, so I had been amazed that the churches I had seen thus far didn’t. This church, built in 1915, is called by the locals “God’s little Inkpot” due to its shape. The bell tower is separate and there is a little monument, crowned with an anchor from 1899, to commemorate the sailors and fishermen who lost their lives at sea.

One of the things I enjoy as part of my job as a cruise ship captain is the interaction with people or just watching people how they go about their business. Today I was amazed again and surprised. Although everybody went ashore to see the few sights that the town had to offer and to enjoy the impressive scenery, the main topic of interest was the village supermarket. Nearly everybody rushed in to compare the prices with home. Greenland is an expensive country, so for once the prices in England, did not look too bad. But I was amazed: here we have cruise people who travel nearly to the top of the world and what do they do, they go to a supermarket…………..

The tender dock is interesting as well; it is a nice floating platform but is overlooked by a series of little cannons, lined up in such a way as if they are there to keep the tourists out. However these cannons are from the whaling days. One was used to launch the harpoons against the whales and the rest where there to signal the islanders if and when whales were seen in the vicinity.

Tomorrow we are in our last port Sissimiut.

Today was a sea day and everybody was ready for it. There is something in the air of Greenland, maybe it’s the freshness of the air or the beautiful sunshine or the glare on the ice, that made everybody so tired after a full the day in port of Nuuk. But everybody was tired and rows of do-not-disturb-signs could be seen in the ships corridors. So today was a day to recuperate and make plans for the next two ports. We still have to call at Llulissat (pronounce lu-le-sat) and Sissimut (sis-se-mut) before the cruise ends in Kangeluusaq. Here everybody flies home with two charter planes, which at the same time bring the new guests on board.

Thus today we had the port talk for the next two ports and lectures about travel photography, whales in Greenland and volcanic smokers on the bottom of the mid Atlantic ridge. Also the ships crew was at it today, with a culinary demonstration, vegetable carving, a wine tasting class and Greek dancing for beginners. The latter is a bit of a happening as the dance floor cannot accommodate more than 10 people at the time. Plus seeing a group of septuarians trying to imitate Zorba the Greek is interesting to observe. The choir is still practising and will give a show on the last day.

The Old man, has invited me to come to the bridge whenever I want but they are so high-strung up there at the moment, as nobody has any ice experience, so I prefer to leave them in peace. I tried to find the captain to have a cup of coffee with him but at both times he was occupied. At least he sounded occupied but you are never sure, as the Greeks tend to be loud and noisy with whatever they are doing. I do not think that they would like my bridge operation at all, where everything happens in a quiet way and a serene peace is evident at all times. Only the regular ringing of the telephone disturbs it. I sailed in 1983 with Greeks at the end of the change over period from Monarch Sun to Volendam and although they are great people to party with, the different outlook on life between Anglo-Saxons and Greeks made for interesting times on the bridge.

In the evening we sailed into a fjord that houses the Eqip Glacier that is nothing else than a piece of the Greenland Icecap reaching down to the water. A soon as we entered the fjord the fog which had persisted most of the day lifted and with the evening sun shining, it was a beautiful sight. The sun was to set at approx. 21.00, but being at such a high latitude, it takes a long time before it gets dark. Although we are way past the mid night sun period.

The fjord is 50 miles deep so we approached the glacier around 9.30 pm. We stayed there for approx. an hour. The glacier has two parts with a protruding rock ridge in the middle. It does not really calve as some other glaciers do. No ice trashing down from great heights. The way it releases ice, is that the ice cap pushes relentlessly down the mountainside and the icebergs break off the way you separate sugar cubes that have stuck together. That creates the large squarish icebergs, which float to open sea.

The ship stayed at a fair distance, which gave a good overview, but you could not really see the way the bergs where breaking off. Glu-wine was served on the lido deck so we had few a few people in very good spirits milling about while looking at the glacier.

Tomorrow we are in Llulissat (pronounce Lu-le-sat) in the entrance of Disko Bay, where most of the icebergs are coming from that drift down the coast of Greenland to the south.

Note: most places in Greenland have reverted to their indigenous names. The Danish names hardly used anymore. The Greenlandic language is quite complicated so there tends to be various spellings around of the names of the places. I got the spellings I use from the chart but I have seen variations ashore to that, so bear with me if I have omitted a U, and S or an L, as the Inuit’s are very fond of stringing three of the same together.

Today we were in Nuuk, capital of Greenland and the biggest town on the island as well. The ship was in port from 9 am until 6 pm. as there was more than enough to do for a full day stop. Nuuk has basically 3 parts. The old town, the new town, and the new new town. The old town is the area where the Vikings landed 1000 years ago and where the first Danish trading post was located in more recent history. The new town is fairly new and is dominated by a number of flats or apartments buildings. Most of them do not look maintained too well. The new new town is basically an extension of the new town, it is just further away from the central area, and construction only started in the 1990’s.

Apart from seeing the old and the new town, there are sightseeing trips with fishing boats to see the whales and icebergs and tours to the new cultural centre for a cultural show. The port consists of three parts, the fishing port, the cargo port and the old steamer port. The latter is the dock where the regular mail steamer used to come. Nowadays it is a container ship from the Royal Artic Line who brings supplies and takes away everything for the export. Passenger traffic is now mainly with the airplane, or helicopter. The Ocean Majesty docked at the old steamer dock. The other option is to anchor in the old town but it is a very exposed anchorage and if the wind picks up, a very cold wind Northerly wind normally, then it is not pleasant to be there at all.

I spent the morning, walking around the town after uploading my blogs of the last few days on the computer of the tourist information centre. It takes a good 30 minutes to walk from the steamer dock over the hill into the town and the company had put on (for nominal charge) shuttle buses to take those into town who did not want to climb the hill.

The peculiar thing with Nuuk is, and for that matter all the Greenland towns, that because of the sever winter weather the shops do not look like shops. They do not stand out from the regular houses apart from a tentative sign over a door. It confused the guests on board, expecting a regular shopping street and finding no open inviting doors with large window displays. No, all is closed up, and you have to feel the doors to find out that the shops are indeed there and open for business. As most of the time the weather is inclement, it makes no sense to change your commercial ways for the few days a year that the sun shines, as it did today. We had once again glorious weather.

What does stand out is Santa Claus mailbox. In Europe every child is told that Santa Claus lives in Lapland, which is a northerly region of Scandinavia. In the States, Santa Claus comes from the North Pole but in Denmark the children are taught that Santa Claus lives in Greenland and has a mailbox in Nuuk. And yes he has, the thing is 17 feet high, and the mail slot is about 12 feet above the ground. It is standing right in the middle of the old town and behind it is a building that houses Santa’s Grotto. This mailbox is the most photographed object in Nuuk and is a most peculiar sight amongst the red houses of old Nuuk.

Another peculiar sight was the bar/restaurant called Crazy Daisy. Which is of course a very Greenlandic name. Just the name encouraged me to explore the place, as a landlord who gives his/her place a name like that, cannot be a bad person. Indeed a very friendly atmosphere was encountered upon entering but as I object to pay $7 for a bottle of beer, I made a hasty exit. However the locals seem to think that it must have been reasonable, as they were having a great time. Some of them deeply focused on studying the carpentry of the undersides of the tables and chairs.

In the afternoon, my help was needed to escort the tour to the Cultural Centre. A brand new and very modernistic building located right in the middle of the new town. The building was opened a few years ago and looks in the summer like a vertical wave of brown wood. In the winter, when covered with snow, it looks like an iceberg and that was the effect that the architect tried to achieve. As if there are not enough icebergs and glaciers in the surrounding area. It acts as community centre, cinema and during the summer season, local groups give performances for the tourists. Today it featured, three accordionists, the instrument having been made popular here by Dutch Whalers. There was Inuit/Eskimo singing and dancing, a classical recital by very talented teachers from the local school of music, and two ladies who performed a masked dance, which mainly consisted of climbing over the audience and scaring the wits out of them. The quality of performance was not always that great, apart from the classical stuff, but as it was pure, local and very native, it was fascinating to watch.

Tomorrow we are at sea, which is a good thing, as the beautiful weather and the very clean air makes everybody very tired.

The ports in Greenland are small, very small. The Ocean Majesty docked and although she is a small ship, bow and stern stuck out considerably past the dock. Main Industry is fishing, although there are a few farmers. The Tourist industry is slowly starting to become a good source of revenue with tours going inland and trips in the fishing boats to see icebergs up close.

With a population of about 2000 in the summer time and a lot less in the winter, it is not a bustling town. But it is fascinating. Multicolored houses dotted on the hills around the harbour, located at the end of the fjord. To get there you have to dodge icebergs all the way from the entrance of the fjord to the end. There were even a few biggies floating near the dock. Luckily as the tide was going out during our call they floated away. Had the tide been coming in, one of them might have floated against the ship, delaying departure until the tide turned again.

The town had only three taxi’s and no busses, so the tours are walking tours. Weather was overcast with a bit of drizzle and that is good weather for Narsaq. Population is mainly Inuit’s or Eskimo’s with a few hundred Danes thrown in. The latter mainly being involved in the fish processing factory and the port.

As I had no tour to escort, I went for a walk. It takes a good two hours to walk around the whole town, as it is very spread out, and to climb the surrounding hills to get a good vantage point for photos. There are some remnants of the Viking settlers village from a 1000 years ago. You will find these all along the coast of Greenland and most of them have not been escavated yet. Time is not a big thing here, and nobody is in a hurry. So one day they will get to it.

The village central heating comes from hot volcanic water again and so the electricity. It has a very nice church, not too special from the outside but very nice on the inside. Typically Danish, although I thought that the altar, the font etc. had some very Greek Orthodox influences. But then I am not an expert on churches. There was no booklet available to find the answer either.

I was intrigued by a pile of stones of the top of one of the hills. So I climbed to it only to find a brass plaque commemorating the International Childeren’s village gathering in Narsaq in 1990. One of the participating towns was Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, a place about 30 minutes away from where I was born. So here I am thousands of miles away from my home country and I find that there has been an whole school class here before me. The Netherlands has only 16 million inhabitants but you can’t get away from them.

A shocking experience was the price of alcohol. A bottle of wine that costs $10,– in the supermarket in England, sold here for $56,– As Greenland is part of Danmark, the alcohol is very highly taxed, to keep consumption down. Eskimo’s have a problem with alcohol, something to do with their genes, and also the Danes tend to get carried away quite easily with drinking, thus the government keeps the prices high.

The ship only stayed for half a day but that was just enough to explore the town, see the church, the trading post and the small museums. It was soo very different from a normal touristy stop, that everybody was amazed. I can only advise, if you want to see Greenland, do it now, before Columbian Emeralds moves in.

Tomorrow we are in the Capital of Greenland. Nuuk.

It takes two days with a speed of 15 knots to get from Reykjavik to Narsaq on the West coast of Greenland. On the second day, the afternoon gives the chance to go through Prinz Christians Sund, a fjord on the south side of Greenland. It is not always possible to get through as the current sometimes brings icebergs to the entrance and the larger ones can block the entrance completely. The Sund has an average width of about 3500 feet so it does not even take a very large iceberg to make the ship go around the Southern point of Greenland instead of providing a scenic afternoon for the guests.

The icepilot on board calls in the morning the ice patrol. This is an organisation set up not too long after the sinking of the Titanic that tracks the icebergs that are floating south in the summer time. It warns shipping in the area and it can also tell the ice pilot on the Ocean Majesty whether the Sund is clear. At both sides of course as it would not be nice to have sailed all the way through and then to find out that the Sund is blocked at the exit. Ice Patrol advised that both sides where clear and so the OM headed for the Eastern entrance passing quite a few big ice bergs on the way. Icebergs with dark blue colors, which indicate thick and compressed ice, and those are the guys that you really do not want to hit.

We were blessed with spectacular weather all day and had glorious sunshine while sailing through. The whole passage reminded me a bit about College fjord in Alaska with its hanging glaciers. Only the Sund is a lot more narrow and the mountains higher, similar to the Norwegian fjords. We could see that a few icebergs had been stranded in the Sund in the past week, as remnants, pieces of ice from collapsed bergs, where still floating around. In a way Greenland is comparable to Alaska, except that the ice bergs are much larger here and that there are signs of volcanic activity.

About three quarters through the Sund there is a little village tucked away behind a rocky ridge and under the Fjord Walls that rise up to Greenlands ice shelve. I did not catch the name of the village, but its claim to fame is, that in the past, they would invite the crew of passing ships to spend the night in the village and encourage the better specimen among the crew to have a short affair with the women of the settlement. This to avoid inbreeding in the colony. I do not know how they regulated the visiting of passing ships but I assume that going through the Sund in those days must have been a very popular route with the male crew on board the ships. Maybe the regular blocking of the Sund by the icebergs regulated traffic a little bit.

It takes approx. 5 hours to get through and when arriving at the other side fog descended upon the water, not un-expected with the sun shining all day.
Tonight was informal, which, this being a ships with British tourist, meant at least jacket and tie. Most Gents wear a three piece suit, or blue blazer, with regimental badge and tie. I do love it, when everybody applies a bit of style to their daily life and somehow, with everybody being spruced up, it makes my pre dinner pint taste even better.

I had a long conversation with the bar manager about selling wine in the dining room and the arguments for and against selling half bottles or not. We do not sell half bottles on Holland America ships and I am just wondering if it would not be an extra source of revenue. I will have to talk to the Hotelmanager when I get back on board. Tomorrow we are in our first port of call in Greenland. Narsaq

Today was the first seaday of two, while the ship crossed the Northern part of the North Atlantic Ocean, with an average speed of 15 knots. We were lucky with the weather, as most of the time it rains and blows here. Today it was just overcast with some confused swell rolling about. Confused means that the swell comes from several directions at the same time. In this case I recognized a south Eastern and a North Eastern swell. It made the ship wobble a bit, but nothing much to worry about.

For the guests on board the day was filled with shorex talks, port talks, and lectures about what there will be to seen in Greenland. As Greenland is for about 97% covered with ice, everything that is there to see is located on a narrow strip of land at the shore line. A total of about 40.000 people inhabit the island, of which 10.000 are Danes, as Greenland is still part of the kingdom of Denmark. Capital is Nuuk and there you have the wondrous situation that they have built an apartment building which houses 1% of the total population of Iceland. Just project that idea to a bigger country. You are happily driving down to New York city and while doing so, you see a co-op on the side of the road which houses 1% of the total population of the USA……………….

One thing I have never seen on another cruise ship is the choir rehearsal. Amid the option of doing deck quoits, shuffleboard, ping pong, golf putting, you can sign up for the choir, which will perform on the last day of the cruise. Among retired middle England it is very popular and the choir normally grows to about 40 to 50 people. Compare it with the fact that bingo here does not draw more than about 25 during the snowball, you have an idea about the level of interest.

The ship is not completely full, because of the fact that they had to reduce the numbers on board for safety reasons. Last cruise the ship bumped into another cruise ship while in Geirangerfjord and crushed lifeboat nbr 6. so the number of pax. carried is now reduced until the lifeboat has been repaired and put back on. This meant that for the captains welcome on board cocktail party, there was plenty of room for everybody. With a full house, it tends to get rather cramped.

The senior staff is mostly from Greece, including the captain. The Hotelstaff is an international mixture, with the chief cook being a Chinese from Vietnam, but who is a wizard at making Indian curries, and therefore very popular with the crew. Quite a few of the crew comes from India,the rest from the Philipines and Indonesia.There are also a number of the Ukraine thrown in.Page and moy staff and the entertainment is all British. As matter of fact the crew hosted a party in the crew mess last evening to celebrate Indian Independence day.

I had dinner with the ice pilot, who will take the ship into Prinz Christian Sund (Fjord)tomorrow, zigzagging between the icebergs. The pilot is a retired cruise ship captain who for decades pottered around Greenlands coast with a very small cruise ship taking guests into all sorts of nooks and crannies to see the local wildlife and vegetation. So he was there years before Greenland caught the eye of mainstream tourism.

The Ocean Majesty clientele is mostly retired English folk and they enjoy a comfortable and simple product. They are looked after very well by the Page and Moy team on board, who run the entertainment and the shore excursion side. The ship is owned by Majestic Cruises of Athens, Greece and the catering is done by a franchise called Ligabuye. The ship itself is slowly fading and will have to be replaced by something better in the near future. As far as I understand, Page and Moy is looking into that.

The strength of Page and Moy lays in its shore excursions. The guests are really onboard to see things and to be culturally enriched by the experience. So in each port, nearly the whole ship is on tour. Apart from a local tour guide, each bus has also a Page and Moy team member on the tour, and that is where I get my chance to do all the excursions. The idea is that you make sure the tour is carried out as specified, that you help the ladies off and on the bus, that you do not loose anybody and that you write a report at the end of each tour with notes for improvement etc. I try not to tell people what I do for a living, I am just Lesley’s husband, and as most British people are not that inquisitive I normally manage to stay incognito for most of the cruise.

Today I did the full day tour, which they call the Golden Circle. It lasts for 8 hours and gives a great overview of the spectacular nature of Iceland. It starts with a stop at Thingvellir National Park, made up of Volcanic Rock formations and the Law Speakers rock. It is an impressive area of great natural beauty and was added to the UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 2004. This is where the first Icelandic parliament met in 980. Great Britain prides itself to be the Mother of all democracies, having had a parliament since the 12th. Century, but here we have the grand mother of all parliaments as the Icelanders preceded them by almost 200 years. There is a 45 minute walk through the park, and I always bring up the rear, to make sure that nobody ends up with another group or gets lost somewhere, or stuck in a toilet. Toilet stops are very important on tours like this, and we have a list with our paperwork with where the toilet stops are and how much time they are apart.

Next stop after an hour of driving through volcanic scenery, was a geyser area, with several geysers, of which one, called the Strokkur, erupts every 3 to 8 minutes, so you can catch it on camera. It is easy walkable and if staying upwind you do not smell the suphur. Here lunch is served, which comprises out of cauliflower soup, salmon and potatoes, similar to what an Icelander will eat. From there it goes to the Gulfoss or Golden Waterfall. It looks a little bit like a miniature Niagara Falls. Very impressive with a massive amount of water dropping into a narrow gulley from about 300 feet in two stages. You can walk all they way up to the waterfall but then a rain coat is of the essence. From there it is a 20 minute ride to the Kerid Crater. This is a dormant volcano crater, 30 meters deep, with a crystal clear lake of another 30 meters depth in the centre. It gives a very good inside into how a volcano is laid out.

All the time while driving, you see signs of thermic activity, especially where the Icelanders have tapped into the earths crust to get hot water out. All the houses and other buildings on the island are heated by hot volcanic water and also electricity is generated with volcanic steam as its source. The only form of pollution they have on the island is caused by transport. Cars, trucks air planes and ships. For the cars there is a trial program going on to see if they can run them on hydrogen fuel. If that proves feasible, then also cars and trucks will not cause any pollution anymore.

Next was a stop at a garden centre which had an extensive souvenir shop and toilets. This garden centre was built right on top of a thin lava crust and that causes small thermal springs to pop up all over the place without warning. Due to the volcanic activity Iceland has minor earthquakes everyday and if the ground shifts, hot sufpheric water might suddenly pop out of a crack in the lava. This time they had a little spring right out side the main entrance but everybody expected it to disappear again, next time the earth shakes.

Final stop was at the Pearl Vantage point in Reykjavik. This is a glass dome built on water tanks. As the whole town is heated with water from volcanic activity, they have large tanks (same as the round oil storage tanks that you see at refineries) on the top of hill sides around the city. As Rekjavik has 200000 inhabitants, which is 66% of the Icelandic population, there are quite a few of these tanks. The tanks act as reservoirs, but also to keep sufficient water pressure in the pipe lines. Now some smart person has come up with the idea to put a glass dome on the top, with a lookout gallery and a revolving restaurant. Quite a expensive restaurant as well. It is a great way to see what the city looks like. On the main floor there was a shoe sale going on so I knew where I could find Lesley, who had arrived ahead of me on another bus. I must complement our passengers, they all ignored the shoes and focused totally on they scenery at hand.

According to the tour guide, if you want to see Iceland completely, you have to do a 7 to 10 day bus tour. We only had one day to see the most of it. But the country is impressive. That the sun shone all day, did not make things worse either of course.

In general Iceland is very bare. It used to be covered for about 70% with forest, but through the ages it all disappeared, used for housing and fuel. As part of the Kyoto agreement, the government is planning to recover at least 7% of the island with trees again and has already made a start with restoring what was left of the Icelandic Forest. The most recent joke about that one is: What do you do when you get lost in the Forest of Iceland. ??? Answer: you get up from you knees and look around…………………….

On departure, there was passenger boatdrill in the form of mustering in the lounge. My job; helping the old ladies put on their lifejackets. After that, I could finally retire to the bar, where they have one thing, which I sadly miss at HAL, and that is draft beer. A pint of good English ale, is perfect to wet ones appetite before going to dinner.
Tomorrow will be a sea day, while we head West towards Greenland.

As promised in my last blog of 22 june, here we go with a daily blog of the captain not on the bridge, but in the bar.
A number of years ago, my wife Lesley started working, summertime/part time, for a British Travel Company called Page and Moy. She did so, as with me doing Alaska in the summers, it was not much fun to be onboard. During the Alaska season, for a Captain it is either working or being in bed. The working hours are continuously broken up with Standby’s on the bridge, or extended hours on the bridge during fog. As you then as well have to run the ship, there is not much free time left and you try to catch as much sleep as you can, every moment that you can. So Lesley, who has been working on the cruise ships for over 30 years, decided to find herself a job, on a ship of course. As Holland America had discontinued the hostess job, which she used to do for the company a number of years ago, there was nothing in the company available that she liked, hence Page and Moy.

This company had started 17 years ago organising tours to motor crosses and the Grand Prix’s for the British Public. They had slowly expanded into other fields including Ocean cruising, chartering Greek cruise ships for the summer season. The ship they currently use is the Ocean Majesty (see separate page for ships bio)and Lesley has worked on board as tour escort in the last few years and this year as future cruise executive. I do not mind this at all, on the contrary, I like it, as it gives me the chance to join her as a spouse, and to get ashore to see the sights in the ports that I visit with my own ship but not having the chance to step off the gangway. This is my 3rd cruise. First year was the Baltic where I finally saw the Hermitage and last year it was Norway, with full day tours into the interior, up and over the glaciers. This year it is Iceland and Greenland.

The funny thing is, is that the Veendam is doing partly the same cruise on its way back from Europe to Montreal. So I am going the same route as my ship is doing, I am just doing it from a different perspective.

Today I flew from Gatwick-London airport with a Page and Moy charter plane to Kevjlavik which is the airport for Reykjavik. Coming from the green pastures of England and Holland, where cows nearly graze on the tarmac of the runway, it was very different to see the area around the airport. It more or less resembled a lunar or marsian landscape. The ship was waiting in the cargo port of Reykjavik as the downtown berth was taken up with other cruise ships. The Ocean Majesty was parked under the bow of the AidaVita, one of the ships of Aida cruises, which are easily recognizable due to the eyes and the hot-reds lips painted on the bow. It must have been a bit disconcerting for those on the bridge of the Ocean Majesty to look all day at those lips, as with the AidaVita being so much bigger then the OM, the red lips where at bridge level. The Ocean Majesty is staying overnight in port and tomorrow the tours start to explore Iceland.