Type in "Greenland Tourism" on your Internet search engine, and you won't find much put there since about 2000, certainly very little about affordable travel. But forget surfing the Web sites, just know now that with the Great Canadian Travel Company, you can visit this fantastic island and stay for eight nights for as little as $1,827, airfare from Ottawa included. The fare is per person, based on double occupancy.
A part of Denmark, yet just 50 minutes by air from North America, Greenland is way off the beaten path, though a few hardy souls are beginning to know its pleasures. You could look at reindeer and musk oxen in the morning, for instance, then go kayaking in the afternoon alongside towering glaciers, and sit down to a good dinner with fine wine and white tablecloth-service in the evening.
On the "Week in Sisimiut" package, you fly out from Ottawa on Mondays and Tuesdays between now and August 5, 2002, to that Greenland town. You stay one night at Iqaluit on Baffin Island, and seven nights in Greenland proper. The fare includes transportation by ship or air within Greenland, and local tours and transfers.
Sisimiut, with 4,000 inhabitants, lies less than 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle, set in a magnificent landscape combining fjords, mountains and sea. You won't find fresher or cleaner air anywhere else on earth. The town is your headquarters for day hikes, sailing, kayaking or wildlife-viewing expeditions, but you can hang around town and shop for arts and crafts along the harbor in a series of 19th-century stone warehouses. Good buys include tupilaks, mythical figures carved from walrus ivory and reindeer antler.
The same firm has a more expensive package, "The Southern Voyage," involving a cruise aboard the Sarfaq Ittuk along Greenland's scenic southwest coast, past icebergs and more glaciers. It's a 250-passenger ship, built for inter-community service and cargo, not for sybaritic cruising. Nonetheless, in lieu of luxury, you get a real slice of local life and a chance to meet Greenlanders as they go about their business. It's a 10-day/9-night trip, priced at $2,653 (and, again, based on double occupancy), including roundtrip airfare, lodging and specified tours and transfers. Departure dates are July 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29, and August 5.
Reservations, brochures and more information are available from the Great Canadian Travel Company at 800/661-3820 or at www.greatcanadiantravel.com/north_greenland.htm. For more information on Greenland, go to www.greenland-guide.com.