ANOTHER day in the Arctic Circle
and there’s more ice.
I'm sure I will eventually tire
of gazing out the window to see gigantic icebergs floating in the water, but
that hasn't happened yet.
During lunch I looked up to see a
segment of ice that was so big, and so close to the port side of our
ice-breaking ship, that it blocked the sun and completely filled the windows.
Some icebergs are perfectly
white, with the sides shaped by the wind that howls across these waters during
an Arctic gale, while others are a bit grubby and covered with a fine layer of
grey silt collected when the block slid down the side of the glacier.
Then there are some icebergs that
are almost black, and these are the blocks that have become unstable after a
quick melt and rolled to expose the side that scraped against the glacier's
bedrock bottom during the long and slow journey to the sea.
Our morning was spent in Karrat
Fjord, an inlet a night's sailing from Ilulissat, and after breakfast the
passengers ventured onto the decks to look at the jagged peaks that form the
sides of this dramatic natural wonder.
As the Clipper Adventurer swung
on its anchor we were able to look across the floating ice to the mountains in
the distance, and we were close enough to see the start of the glacier where
these bergs started life many years ago.
There was one view that kept
catching my eye and I think I must have snapped a dozen photos trying to
capture the subtle colours of the Arctic landscape.
The scene was picture perfect
with a big chunk of ice floating in the water behind the ship, and beyond that
a steep waterside slope just high enough to reveal another tall peak in the
distance almost surrounded by an heavy August fog.
After a few hours anchored in
Karrat Fjord we headed back towards open water bound for the Davis Strait and
our crossing west from Greenland to Canada, and ice bergs the size of mountains
accompanied our journey until I went to bed close to midnight when the sun was
still just above the horizon.
