AASIAAT, Greenland - The ice cap is spectacular when the sun is shining, but you dont want to be there during a snow storm. We barely escaped one that would have confined us to our tents for at least two days, taking a helicopter back to Ilulissat early in the morning, just as a blizzard was gathering steam.

I left Bob in Ilulissat taking more pictures of icebergs and took a 25 minute flight down to Aasiaat, the capital of Greenlandic kayaking and whale watching. The town of 3,000 overlooks an archipelago of around 1,000 islands in the southern part of Disko Bay. Snow-capped Disko Island can be seen 80 kilometres to the west, a distance local elders say hunters would traverse every winter on dog sleds when the bay used to freeze over. With average winter temperatures warming significantly, that hasnt happened in years.

Kayaking, invented in the Arctic, almost disappeared in Greenland in the middle of the last century when it was made irrelevant for fishing with the advent modern trawlers. A push to salvage local traditions resulted in the establishment of kayaking clubs in several towns. Now, Greenland organizes national kayak championships in disciplines such as speed and endurance, as well as kayak carrying and rolling. There are 30 different ways to roll on each side of the kayak, says Adam Hansen, a local kayaker.

Tourists come to Aasiaat for kayaking trips ranging from two to eight days, spending the night in tents or hunting huts on uninhabited islands. Between the middle of June and the end of September, they can usually see minke and humpback whales and narwhals up close from the kayak, sometimes right outside Aasiaat harbor.

Hansen is always ready to recall close encounters, like the time when five orcas attacked a minke whale. One of the killer whales hit the minke so hard it pushed it up out of the water, he said. Another time, we were kayaking toward a group of feeding humpback whales to get a better look at them when we realized that we were in the middle of the circle of bubbles they make to trap the plankton. We had to paddle fast out of their eating area, because thats exactly where they surface. 

Its too early to see whales now, so the remains of one fin whale hunted by local fishermen three years ago will have to do. Its skull and bones are sitting at the bottom of a shallow sound now blocked off by pack ice that scratches against our slow-moving boat with a fearsome shriek.

In the cafeteria at Sømandshjemmet (Seamans Home) hostel that overlooks the harbor, weathered fishermen with big hands and worn-out overalls eat hearty portions of roast pork and potatoes. They are wary of talking about whale hunting because of the strong reaction it causes in most of the Western world.

We dont kill whales for killings sake, we use them for food, says Ib Brandt, a harpoon operator. We hunt at the minimum we can use and we dont waste any part of the meat.

The sun sets long after midnight in Aasiaat in May. Photo by Gelu Sulugiuc, Reuters.