Day 1: Home to Iceland

Tuesday was the start of what was due to be a big adventure for us: our first ever trip to Greenland! I can't pretend Greenland is a place I've always wanted to go to - in fact, it's a place I've never really thought about going to - but earlier this year I was reading an Icelandic crime novel where the plot involved the murder suspects leaving Iceland on a flight to Greenland, hotly pursued by the Icelandic detective. Before I knew what was happening I started googling Greenland and ended up disappearing down a rabbit hole which ultimately resulted in me booking this holiday. The plan was to fly to a place called Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, from where we'd transfer by boat to the small village of Qaqortoq. We were booked on a ferry called Sarfaq Ittuk which would be leaving Qaqortoq on Wednesday evening at 7pm and spending the next four days sailing up the western coast of Greenland.  The pictures I'd seen online looked amazing!

There are only two ways to fly to Greenland: via Reykjavik with Icelandair or via Copenhagen with Air Greenland. I had chosen the former option, which worked out as cheapest on the way out. Our first flight to Reykjavik was at 13.05 from Heathrow, so it wasn't a particularly early start by the standards of our holidays.

We left home shortly after 07.30 anyway, slightly nervous about whether we might get stuck in rush hour traffic somewhere between home and Heathrow. We made good time initially and even had a quick stop for breakfast at a McDonalds on the M1, but partway to London we got caught in an unexplained traffic jam on the motorway and it was almost 11am by the time we made it to the airport parking. We were in luck and managed to jump on a bus to the terminal straightaway. That was probably the last lucky thing to happen on this journey  

I'd been worried about our boarding passes because when I'd checked in via the Icelandair website the day before, I'd only been given a boarding pass for our first flight to Reykjavik. We went to a desk to sort that out and were issued with a new combined boarding pass for both flights, plus assured that our luggage would go all the way through to the final destination. That was good news! We got through security with no problems, participating in another one of those trials where you don't have to take anything out of your bag, and then had time for a drink and a snack before it was time to board our first flight.

The first flight was remarkably smooth and took off almost exactly on time, which is rare for a flight these days. There wasn't much of a view as we were mainly flying over the ocean, but we did have a useful screen to show us where we were.

As we came in to land we got a tiny glimpse of Iceland, where it seemed to be quite a sunny day.

The flight to Iceland had been three hours but we'd gone back in time one hour, so it was now around 15.15. Our connecting flight to Narsarsuaq was due to depart at 17.30, so we followed signs for transfers across the terminal and ultimately through passport control. The border guard asked Tim how long he was spending in Iceland and he said "two hours". Little did we know  

We were feeling hungry by this point so we explored the airport until we found a fast food restaurant where the prices didn't look too expensive. I had a pepperoni pizza while Tim had fish and chips. At some point around this time I got a notification from the Icelandair app on my phone saying that our flight had been delayed by two hours. Oh dear!

Ordinarily a delay of two hours wouldn't be the end of the world. In this circumstance it was slightly stressful because, on the basis that our flight was due to arrive at 18.25, we had a boat transfer to Qaqortoq booked for 19.15. This was the final boat of the day and if we missed it, we'd be completely stranded in Narsarsuaq with no options for going anywhere else. Travelling in Greenland is somewhat complicated by the fact that there are no roads between individual settlements. So if you are in Place A, you have at most two options of getting to any given Place B: boat or helicopter. 

We found a quiet bar to have a glass of wine in the airport while I attempted not to panic. The airport and harbour in Narsarsuaq aren't right next to each other and the boat company have a shuttle bus which was supposed to meet the flight and transfer us to the harbour. Narsarsuaq isn't exactly a place which is overwhelmed with incoming flights so I figured they would know the plane was delayed and - hopefully - wait for it to arrive.

When it got to the appointed time for our delayed flight we made our way to the gate, together with a small group of other people. We sat down and waited for a while until we saw that boarding had commenced and the first people in the queue had made their way onto the bus which would take us to the plane. Then we joined the queue and began to move slowly forward. We progressed - but hadn't quite made it to the front of the queue - when a staff member began to shout out an announcement. Our flight had been cancelled and we were all to go to the service desk to get help.

There was mass confusion in the queue as everyone struggled to hear and process what had been said. We were some of the first to react and extricate ourselves from the line, heading back up the stairs from the gate towards the main terminal where we quickly located the service desk and got in line. The only problem was that there were no staff there to give any service. We stood there for 10 minutes or so while a large queue of people built behind us. Then eventually a staff member arrived and made an announcement to the effect that we all needed to go to the baggage hall to reclaim our bags, then make our way to the "meeting point" from where a bus would take us to a hotel overnight. It seemed that the flight cancellation was due to bad weather in Narsarsuaq.

We set off towards baggage reclaim, where we stood around in confusion for a bit because our flight wasn't listed on any of the information screens so it was impossible to know which carousel we were supposed to wait by. After a while - more by luck than anything else - I saw one of our suitcases go past on a random carousel. We grabbed it and fortunately the other one wasn't far behind. Now all we had to do was find the mysterious "meeting point".

There wasn't any obvious meeting point when we emerged into the arrivals hall, so Tim went to an information desk to ask. The guy on the desk was quite confused and said there were different meeting points for different things so he couldn't really help. Eventually, by wandering about a bit, we saw some signs saying "Meeting point" and followed those to the opposite end of the airport where we found... a man in a bow tie! "Greenland?" he said.

We nodded and he explained that he was sent from the hotel to organise our transportation. As more passengers arrived, he began dividing us into different groups depending on who was going to go to which hotel. We'd been the first passengers to make it to the meeting point, so there was a lot of waiting around. I went outside to get a bit of fresh air.

When I returned there was an airline employee walking around giving information. It seemed that Icelandair were arranging for the flight to try again tomorrow, but not until 16.45. That was late and didn't give us much opportunity to get to Qaqortoq for a 19.00 ferry departure. Oh dear  

Before we had time to ask any questions we were advised that our bus had arrived, so we headed outside and got onboard. When I say that we had flown to Reykjavik today, we'd actually flown to a town called Keflavík, which is where Iceland's main international airport is located. It's a 45-minute drive into Reykjavik so the bus wasn't taking us there, but rather into the centre of Keflavík, which itself is one of the biggest towns in Iceland with a population of around 15 000 people.

Icelandair had booked us into what looked like a rather expensive hotel, certainly outside our price range for Iceland. We queued up to be allocated a room and a voucher for dinner in the hotel restaurant. The latter turned out to be rather disappointing (chicken salad!) but the room was rather nice.

Most importantly, it had free WiFi. I spent some time online, trying to work out what on earth our options were for the next day. I quickly established that if our flight arrived in Narsarsuaq at the time for which it was now scheduled, there was no way we could get to Qaqortoq on time to catch the ferry at 19.00. But, there was a chance that we could make it to a place called Narsaq where the ferry was due to call at 21.00 as its first stop after Qaqortoq. I fired off emails to a couple of boat transfer companies to see whether they had a sailing to Narsaq at the time we needed, then emailed the hotel we had booked in Qaqortoq to cancel our stay for tonight. Luckily they were very nice about it and didn't charge me

If it turned out that we couldn't get a boat transfer to Narsaq, we were definitely going to miss the ferry (which only runs once a week). In that case, there would be no point us flying to Narsarsuaq; instead, we'd be better off trying to get to Nuuk, from where we should be able to intercept the ferry on Friday evening for the final part of its journey. Icelandair had a flight to Nuuk tomorrow evening, as did Air Greenland, so that gave us options at least.  There was nothing more we could do until we heard back from the boat companies, so we decided to call it a day and go to bed. Hopefully tomorrow would go more smoothly!