DISKO BAY CRUISE

Ilulissat lives to the rhythm of its port with fishing and tourist boats snaking between the ice. While flying over the area provides a unique view of the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, the break-up zone where icebergs calve and accumulate in the 60 kilometres of the fjord, the Ilulissat cruise at the mouth of the bay provides a closer look. Such gigantism, the different shapes, the bright white, the bright blue fascinate and frighten at the first crackles that let us imagine the worst. The most common is to see huge blocks detach from the most vertical parts, fall into a huge crash and create large waves. But the balance is precarious and the rupture can be deeper. The unbalanced iceberg can easily change its centre of gravity and waterline. The black spots on the ice are parts of the iceberg that have scraped the bottom of the fjord and, due to the movement, have found themselves in the open air. If there are straight lines characteristic of ruptures, there are also rounded shapes, changes in texture, some arches, cavities... all this is the play of water currents around icebergs, snowfall that has inserted itself over time into the crevasses, different types of ice more or less compressed. Nature's creativity seems limitless. When the sun pretends to set, the horizon blazes and a spectacle of amazing colours transforms the cruise. The blue, yellow or pink colors stand out depending on the composition of the iceberg: more or less ancient snow, very compressed ice, ice that has been in the water.... Its position in the glacier and the way it was subjected to pressure and then its iceberg life naturally create this phenomenon that seems unreal. The cold is intense as the hours spent on the water pass, but the magic of icebergs keeps all tourists on deck listening to what the Inuit call "the song of the icebergs". Several tour operators including Albatros Arctic Circle, World of Greenland, Arctic Friend or Ilulissat Boat Tours offer a day cruise but also during the midnight sun (from 21h30) when the colours become incredible with the flaming reflections of the sun setting on the huge icebergs.... while enjoying a Martini "on the real rocks"! A must not to be missed.