There are more and more active travellers who are over 60 but still looking for adventure and new places to discover. Many well-known locations have become unattractive in recent years, over-crowded with too many ‘bucket list’ tourists.
We have been travellers all our lives and, a couple of years ago when in our 70s, we discovered Greenland. It is an extraordinary place with few tourists and a huge amount to see and do. We thought it would be useful if we shared tips from our own experiences that might give fellow ‘seniors’ some travel ideas.
– Dressing for the Arctic Climate: Tips and Tricks
With all the high-tec clothing that is available today, there is no need to worry about being cold unless you visit Greenland during the wintertime! Layers is the answer, so invest in a good thermal under-layer. After that we just wear what we would on a winter’s day in the UK, with a warm hat, gloves, a scarf and shoes or boots with thick, high grip soles.
Often when we have arrived to start an activity in Greenland the tour operator has provided yet another additional layer of outer clothing, when sledding it might be a seal skin suit or, out at sea in an open boat, a wind and waterproof coverall. We always accept whatever is offered!
Alistair with seal skin clothing. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
– Accommodation: From Luxury Hotels to Cozy Hostels
In our youth we backpacked but now we look for a few more creature comforts. We are continually surprised by the high standard of hotels and hostels across the whole country. If you are working on a tight budget, self-catering in an apartment or hostel is a good option.
– Culinary Delights: A Taste of Greenland
Greenlandic food is an interesting fusion of international and local cuisine. At one end of the spectrum are musk ox burgers and reindeer sausages but fine dining opportunities offer reindeer steaks, better than the finest venison, and delicious snow crab. Unsurprisingly, all fish is really fresh and good, especially if you caught it yourself. Lamb from south Greenland is also excellent.
The Danish influence means there are bakeries even in the smallest settlements and no gathering is complete without coffee. Try a Greenlandic coffee, laced with whisky, Kahlua and Grand Marnier.
– Connectivity in Remote Locations: Staying in Touch
Greenland may be isolated but it is not backwards with its use of technology. Practically most hotels and restaurants offers customers Wi-Fi and many settlements have good mobile phone coverage, 4G or 5G. Everything seems to be on the Internet and a lot of smaller business rely on Facebook as their website. A slight issue is that sites in Greenlandic can’t be translated by browsers so we switch the sites into Danish and then the browser can translate for us.
– The Unique Challenge of Getting Around
There are no roads between towns! You can’t drive out of any town; even in the capital Nuuk the roads go nowhere. To get out of town you use a boat or a plane and a lot of ordinary people have their own boats. It is a great way to travel up the fjords – which are the biggest in the world.
Longer distances are usually covered in an Air Greenland plane or helicopter – they have more helicopters and run more scheduled helicopter flights than any other airline. We love flying in Greenland – the views over fjords, mountains and the ice sheet are always spectacular. You can also take a chartered helicopter to land on a glacier or the top of a mountain. Once we took a Sermeq helicopter to drop us at NTS’s remote hut at Tasiusaq in South Greenland where we could stay and really experience the wilderness. Once the helicopter had left, the only sounds were the river and the wind.
Alistair is ready to get onboard of Air Greenland helicopter. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
An interesting alternative way to see the coastal settlements is to take the Arctic Umiaq ferry along the west coast. You can just get a dormitory bed but last time we chose our own en-suite cabin. The crew are very welcoming and it is a great opportunity to chat to the locals in the cafe – they were as interested in our lives as we were in theirs.
Alistair is on Sarfaq Ittuk (Arctic Umiaq Line ferry) enjoying the ocean view. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
– The Joy of Walking and Alternative Transport Options
Every town is small and easy to walk around and you can walk pretty much anywhere as nobody owns land in Greenland, they just own the house they live in. In some of the larger towns there are easy to use buses but we mostly walk everywhere. As the towns are small, it is easy to get onto a trail into the backcountry.
Gill is on the wooden path in Ilulissat Unesco area. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
We’ve done some lovely walking out in Aasiaat and Ilulissat in particular. There are plenty of local tour operators that will take you further afield – camping in a hovering tent in the hills above Nuuk with Two Ravens was an experience we will never forget.
We do use walking poles to give us that bit of extra stability. In winter, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing take the place of walking, although in the south of Greenland the walking season is surprisingly long – or you could just jump on one of Riding Greenland’s Icelandic horses, of course!
Alistiar is enjoying winter hiking in Ilulissat. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
– Museum Experiences: Greenland National Museum and Ilulissat Cultural History Museum
We have a couple of favourite museums, one is the National Museum in the capital Nuuk where the whole Inuit story is so well told and where the Qilakitsoq mummies are on display, a display that will take your breath away. Another favourite is the Ilulissat Cultural History Museum where the complex history and culture around Inuit hunters and their kayaks is told. This museum is also where Knud Rasmussen, the renowned Arctic explorer, was born and spent his first year in Ilulissat.
– The Ice Sheet: A World of Silence and Beauty
Our trip with Nuuk Water Taxi up Nuuk Fjord took us all the way up to Kapisillit, a tiny settlement with a population of just less than 50. On the way the scenery was spectacular, our tiny boat in a huge landscape, and it is only when we visited Greenland’s tiny isolated settlements that we started to understand what life is like for the average Inuit today. One nice surprise was that Kapisillit’s Pilersuisoq supermarket sold us fresh baked pastries and hot coffee. On the way back we stopped to chip some ice off a stranded iceberg, perhaps a million years old; it went well with a glass of whisky.
Alistair on the the icesheet. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
In a number of places you can get onto the ice sheet. The world only has two real ice sheets and the other one is in the Antarctic. Greenland’s is huge and we got onto it from Kangerlussuaq where a gravel road leads to its edge. Our guide from Albatros Arctic Circle helped us clip a pair of crampons onto our boots and off we walked for the day. It is a very special place – practically silent, surprisingly undulating and very white with bright blue patches of water. We didn’t have time to spend the night there but that’s on the list for our next trip.
– Wildlife Encounters: Whales and Icebergs
Boats are also good to get up close to whales and icebergs. We’ve done this both in Aasiaat and in Sisimiut, where Jan Banemann from Sisimiut Private Boat Safari not only found us humpbacks out of season but also took us to a settlement that had been abandoned when seal hunting was no longer sustaining the population.
He later took us fishing – we caught more than 2kg of prime cod in 15 minutes and that was dinner sorted! You can go out in kayaks too, getting up close to seals and icebergs.
Sea fishing. Photo bSea fishing. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbelly Gill and Alistair Campbell
– The Welcoming Nature of the Greenlandic People
The Greenlandic people are very welcoming and always ready to help. Their communities are tight knit, probably because some communities are cut off in the winter months. We’ve been fascinated to listen to local people tell us about how they cope with the long dark winters, helping each other physically and mentally.
– Cultural Insights: Kaffemiks and Local Traditions
A great way to meet the locals is to attend a kaffemik – an extended coffee morning that goes on all day and involves lots of cake and traditional Greenlandic food. Several tour operators can organise this for you or you may just get invited into a house as you walk past. Again, we always say yes.
Alistair is enjoying meal with locals in South Greenland. Gill must be behind the camera. Photo by Gill and Alistair Campbell
We recently visited a birthday celebration. The young lady in question was feeding the sheep when we arrived even though the house was full of guests. When she returned they sprinkled her with cinammon as she was unmarried and it was her 25th birthday. If she is still unmarried at 30 she will be sprinkled with pepper.
– Health and Safety: Navigating Greenland’s Healthcare System
Comprehensive health insurance is an absolute necessity for all visitors except those from Nordic countries. Should you need health care, there are six hospitals, the biggest being in Nuuk. All towns have health centres with resident doctors and nurses but in smaller settlements healthcare is delivered by a mixture of trained health workers and remote telemedicine. For this reason, it is not uncommon for those with health issues to be evacuated to the nearest hospital by plane, helicopter or ship.
Every settlement has a pharmacy. Obviously, these pharmacies may stock different drugs to those that you are used to, so make sure you pack sufficient quantities of any medication that you rely on. There are dentists in all towns with a population over 500.
Should you need health care, there are five regional hospitals in Greenland; Nuuk, Aasiaat, Ilulissat, Sisimiut, Qaqortoq, the biggest being in Nuuk, and every little settlement has a clinic.
– Shopping and Dining: Subsidized Supermarkets and Diverse Cuisine
Every settlement has a supermarket. In the smaller settlements these are subsidised by the government to enable them to carry a surprisingly wide range of foods although this can get depleted if ice prevents the supply ship from docking. In the larger towns there will be more than one supermarket offering a wide range of goods.
If you are vegetarian or vegan in Nuuk you will have no problems but outside of the capital, you may have to ask in a restaurant to have a dish made without meat or fish. If you are able to cook for yourself then all supermarkets sell a selection of nuts, fruit and vegetables – possibly frozen.
We have had flights delayed and that it is all part of the experience. Once, instead of flying, we ended up taking an all-terrain vehicle to a sheep farm in South Greenland and enjoying a lunch with the farmer and his family. On another occasion, whilst delayed at an airport, a group of reindeer hunters shared their stories and their strawberry gateaux with us.
Greenland is waiting to be explored, with new international airports opening; our advice is to visit soon, before other tourists discover this extraordinary country.
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