Sunday 31st July - Icebergs in the Arctic night

 At 8:45pm, after my £50 dinner of fish soup, musk ox burger and a small beer (I really can't get my head around prices in Greenland), I made my way up to the World of Greenland office for my Midnight Iceberg Tour. There were 5 other passengers on our small boat including 2 Italians, an American and a Dutch couple. Somehow I managed to discover that, like myself, the Dutch woman had just started retraining as a teacher after working for almost 30 years in market research. Small world..

We boarded a small bus which took us down to the harbour. There we were met by our young guide Oliver and the boat driver and we hopped on board.  I'll let the pictures do the talking!

9:15pm - (left) facing east towards the front of the ice fjord and (right) facing west towards the setting sun

The still waters of the bay are ruffled only by other spotter boats, which also provide a scale to the icebergs.

Looking west, the icebergs provide a beautiful accompaniment to the setting sun.

And as if setting sun, stunning icebergs, glassy waters are not enough... what might that be....?

In total we saw 4 - apparently humpback - whales on our little trip, One of the drawbacks of relying on your mobile phone for pictures/videos is that you need to have your gloves off... which is tricky when it feels like quite a few degrees below... Then again, it means that most of the whales were seen through my eyes rather than the viewfinder... but you'll just have to believe me! Here were my attempts... 

Having been reinforced with a mug of hot chocolate during the whale watching, we made our way back to Ilulissat just after midnight with big grins on our cold faces and a head full of icebergs, whales and sunsets... We couldn't have asked for more!