Monday - day 17 - part 1 - Qaqortok

On Monday, we stopped at Qaqortok (ka-KOR-tak), the largest town in southern Greenland with about 3000 residents.

We were anchored out (and tendering in to the port) -- some pictures from the ship...

.... unfortunately not a sunny day...

... pretty colors of houses on the hillside.

Travel guide Gage had given a suggested walking route that we kind-of used as a guide.

Tourist information office in Qaqortoq welcomed us to town

We stopped by the oldest fountain in Greenland, Mindebrønden, finished in 1932. It is said that the fountain depicts whales spouting water out of their blowholes, but it wasn't spouting when we saw it. Carl looked for the on/off switch but did not find it.

Frelserens Kirke (Church of the Savior) -- this is the older church in town. A newer one was built in the 1970s because they needed more room, which we, unfortunately, didn't see.

A brook (river?) running through town

Another view of the church

We like stopping at grocery stores -- and couldn't resist this one -- I read the name as "pissy fit"!

Some of the items we saw in the store... dry cereals (a lot of US brands)...

... snack foods...

... cat food...

I realized that our previous picture of cat food in the grocery store did not show whether there was kitty litter, so I specifically looked for it at this store -- "Kattsand"!

Some of the beverages

While we were at the grocery store, 

...I noticed these two ladies shopping -- their outfits were made up of fuzzy jackets/tops with a wide metallic ribbon at the bottom. The lady on the left also had what looked like hand-sewn sealskin boots.

Our friends, Joe and Pat, had attended a shore excursion sponsored by Holland America, called "Taste of Greenland" where they got to taste some of the local foods. It turned out that their group was meeting in a building next door to Pisiffik and finished up at the time we were passing by, so we joined up with them to walk around the city.

They had heard in their tasting event that Monday was the first day of school for the children in Qaqortoq, so they were having special events at the school, 

...we went over to the school and there was a large gathering of families there...

... it seemed that the administrators (at the top of the steps) were making announcements and maybe giving awards of some kind - lots of cheering and tossing out of hard candies.

Joe and Pat had heard that this was the only high school in the southern part of Greenland, so it includes boarding facilities for children whose families live in the southern part of the country, but not in Qaqortoq.

We walked a little further uphill to the "great lake". Joe said that he heard that, since the areas were populated and named by nomadic peoples, there are a lot of "great lakes" -- as any lake they saw at a new location was that location's "great lake".

The outflow of the lake is that brook / river that we had seen earlier -- and you can see other houses up the hillside in the distance, near the harbor.

We were told that, originally, different colors of buildings indicated different services -- red would be churches, schools, shops, homes of priests or teachers; yellow would be hospitals, doctors, and healthcare workers; green would be radio and telecommunication buildings; blue would be fish factories and industrial plants; and black would be police stations. Now, however, people can paint their homes any color they want. Bright colors help people spot buildings easily during heavy snow and dark winters.

We imagined (made up a story) that the towns tried to keep the colors diverse -- so if you went in to the local "Lowes" or "Home Depot", and you asked for blue exterior paint, the shopkeeper would ask your address, look up the colors of your neighbors' houses, and maybe say, "Oh, I'm sorry sir, there are already 3 blue houses around you. May I interest you in a nice green or yellow?" 

Some poppies and lupine near the edge of the lake

I was showing Pat and Joe the picture of the map that Gage had provided that we were attempting to follow. Note that they have mosquito nets over their heads. I am not sure that there were mosquitos, but at times, there were overly friendly bugs who liked to fly in your face. We had brought the head netting too, but didn't find them annoying enough to be worth putting on the head nets.

Joe and Pat stopped in the museum, and we kept on going. One of the things we had been told about to make sure we saw were the Stone and Man carvings... this was an outdoor display of carvings in the stone down near the harbor...

Walrus

Faces...

Close-up of a face with some fish around it...

... more faces...

Whale...

Fish and/or whales

We had completed our desired walk around Qaqortoq, and headed back to get our hot chocolate and get onto a tender back to the cruise ship.

This was our last port in Greenland. We have commented that we didn't know exactly what to expect from Greenland, but that we are glad now to have memories of places we've seen.