Tip:
It’s easiest to book all transportation and accomodation through Blue Ice Explorer. They’ll then coordinate everything when you’re on the ground.
I love traveling with my phone, and I use it all the time. If I’m in a taxi, I map the route from the airport to my hotel to make sure the driver is taking me to the right place – and not taking me on a longer drive than necessary. I look up how to say phrases in the local language. I keep up with the news at home, and I’m available if my wife needs me. And if I have a question about anything (When was that cathedral built? Who won the game last night?), I can find the answer within seconds.
But there’s a price to pay.
If you’re online, to some extent you’re not present. You’re glancing at notifications. You’re thinking about the email that came in – even if you don’t plan on responding right away. You’re wondering how many likes your latest social post has. And you’re thinking about the outside world.
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It all combines to make you miss what’s around you.
So in South Greenland I unplugged. I had no online access at all for five days. The destination was more important than my inbox. And my traveling companion – my 10-year-old son – was far more important than my inbox. So what did I discover?
South Greenland is stunning! We stayed on two sheep farms, we kayaked, we rode horses, we fished, we cruised up fjords, and we hiked – a lot. And I saw all of it. There was never a need to take my eyes off the scenery, or take my mind off the scenery.
Unplugging in some destinations can be problematic. Sure you can still navigate with maps and asking people for directions, but getting lost isn’t always a fun adventure. In Greenland we didn’t need to worry about a thing. We already had our first instruction: “Find the Blue Ice Explorer rep at the Narsarsuaq airport when you arrive.” That was all we needed! We showed up, found the Blue Ice Explorer desk, and received our full itinerary, starting with a quick boat ride across Eriksfjord to Qassiarsuk. From that point onward, if anything needed to be changed or coordinated, our hosts – at two sheep farms and at the Igaliku Country Hotel – were on top of it. And on our hikes, we couldn’t have gotten lost if we wanted to. There aren’t a lot of roads in South Greenland!
When I finally got back online, at the Copenhagen airport following our Air Greenland flight from Narsarsuaq, I had 300 emails waiting for me. I quickly deleted 290 of them. They simply didn’t matter. And the remaining ten hadn’t needed immediate responses. I took another day or two to even respond to those. My wife and daughters were just fine. The outside world continued – still with far more headlines containing bad news than good news. I far preferred our non-connected existence in Greenland!
There were a lot of times when my son and I wondered about things – things we would have looked up if we had internet access. But we didn’t need the answers right away. We were simply used to having them right away. When we were finally back online we looked up a few things, but we forgot most of what we had questioned. Which is just fine.
When we weren’t hiking or going on scheduled excursions, we relaxed. We read. We played Frisbee. We stared out at icebergs. We even figured out a way to play ping pong on a picnic table at a farm house! And we loved all of it. It was seriously fun to slow down.
I highly recommend getting offline! I loved the undistracted time with my son. I loved freeing my mind from the “there” and concentrating on the “here”. I loved getting lost in a book again. And I missed absolutely nothing by unplugging. The world was still there, even if we weren’t in communication with it for a few days. And if you want to get offline, I highly recommend doing it in Greenland! We technically could have gotten a cell signal in several locations, and we could have gotten online everywhere we stayed. But our trip wouldn’t have been as good if we had.
Trip Length: 6 days / 5 nights
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