Alaska

The worst thing about the USA apart from its politics, is the way it treats people entering the country as tourists. It’s not actually necessary to regard us all as criminals, you know. But yet it forces people to wait for hours to be photographed, fingerprinted and interrogated, all so we can go and spend good money in the place.

We literally waited three hours to clear immigration at Vancouver’s cruise terminal to get onto the boat (considered American territory and we were eventually going to go to Alaska). That was after a very early start and long ferry ride. We didn’t get onto the cruise boat until after three pm, and had gobble some lunch before an obligatory lifeboat drill at four pm. To say I was pissed off and knackered after all this is an understatement. Grrrr.

However. Once we ate some more and had showers and calmed down, we suddenly realised that (a) the stateroom was bigger than some of the hotel rooms we’d stayed in and (b) we didn’t need to pack or meet a deadline again for a whole week. Yippee! And we could stay in our room for the entire trip if we wanted because room service was free. (We didn’t, but we could. We had some breakfasts in the room though.) Our verandah gave us a perfect view of the scenery and we could have as much or as little to do with other people as we wanted. Bliss 😉

The first day was at sea, letting us explore the ship, food options and entertainment possibilities. Also, relax after the hectic day before. It was ‘formal dress’ night so we blinged up and went to the main ‘posh’ dining room – where we were jammed in like sardines. Oh well. Food was okay, but not worth the hassle (the food in the ‘casual’ parts was just as good without all the nonsense) but we saw orcas outside the window 🙂 Oh and humpbacks from our verandah while eating breakfast the next morning!

The first excursion was a trip up Tracey Arm and to the Sawyer Glaciers. Our ship was also going up the Arm but not up the inlets to the glacier face. We transferred in midstream onto the tour boat:

And then spent the next six hours in freezing wind looking at fantastic scenery, harbour seals on ice floes, the occasional whale and one nosy Stellar’s sea lion. The colours of the ice, and the rocks and waterfalls, were all stunning:

It was a long, tiring day (not least because of some of the other people on the boat who were incredibly thoughtless in their picture taking), but so worth it. We were too knackered to go into Juneau when we rendezvoused with our boat there, so just went straigh to our cabin. We didn’t miss much by all accounts. Juneau has 36 jewellry stores and not much else, apparently.

The next day was Skagway, where we’d had a tour booked but cancelled for low numbers. The main tourist activity there is a train and/or bus through Whitehorse Pass but neither of us felt up to that after the long trip we’d just had in Canada. So we just explored the very small town, bought some more crap, and went back to a quiet boat to relax. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of places to buy crap in the town, as during the summer they get a cruise boat in every day, and ours was one of three that particular day.

That train is the snow plough for the line. It’s big:

Skagway trades on its rep as a hard drinking, hard whoring frontier town:

But actually it’s pretty sedate, and rather nice (I was in a minority though in vastly preferring it to Ketchikan.) Full of clueless tourists, but oh well. I liked it.

Next day was Glacier Bay, which topped Tracey Arm for fantastic scenery, but beat out just about everywhere else we’d been thus far. By good fortune we were on the right side of the boat (i.e the left side) for the best views of the glaciers in the morning. But it was all fantastic. The Alaskan Parks Service rangers, who came on board to monitor our speed and conduct, as well as to give talks to the passengers, had to climb onto and off our moving boat by tender:

You can see the glacial till clearly here

Although for cruise boats, the glaciers are the big attraction, the till actually reduces the diversity of lift under water. The really wonderful stuff is much further down the bay towards the sea. However, on the surface you can see orcas, humpbacks, and Stellar’s sea lions, which we did, and black and grizzly bears, which we didn’t. Standing on the verandah as Doug did, as in the above photo, was bloody hard work in the cold wind, but every time I came inside, he’d shout and I’d have to come back to see sea otters or something else. Oh the tragedy 😉 As we left the bay we passed South Marble Island which is where the sea lion haul out. Pictures on the critter page 🙂

The next day in Ketchikan was my least favourite day of the cruise, because the town is just tacky as hell (though it was the favourite stop for everyone else we spoke to, go figure.) The number of cruise boats in a fairly small harbour beggared belief:

You can’t see that there are at least five other boats in dock. The place was crowded.

Ketchikan claims to be the Salmon capital of the World, as well as the wettest place in Alaska. We had mostly dry weather that day, and the only salmon we saw were dying or at least very sluggish:

If you ignore the shops, the town is pretty enough

We could have gone bear spotting (some of our group did and saw a lot of grizzlies up close), but we hadn’t booked anything and didn’t feel like doing so. We were just knackered after three weeks of travelling. A bald eagle flew past our window a couple of times, so there was that.

Last day was quiet, just cruising the Inside Passage (we were on the wrong side for the scenery but that was okay this time). I have to mention our wonderful stewards, Komang and Fery, who like most of the non-officer staff, were from Indonesia. Cruise boats commonly recruit from Indonesia and the Phillipines because they can get away with paying shit wages and demanding seven day a week employment with no rest days. People from poorer countries still take the work because it’s better paid than back home, where even having a degree doesn’t mean you’ll earn anything much at all. I spoke to a psychology graduate, and he told me about another worker who’s a history graduate, and another a qualified pilot.

Despite the terrible pay and conditions, and working from six in the morning until well after nine at night, our stewards were unfailingly lovely, funny and helpful. And even had time to put up towel animals if we let them in for the “turn down service” (becasue rich people can’t turn down their own bed clothes, WTF?)

Komang couldn’t understand why I was happy for them not to service the room if we were there all day and had enough towels. I explained that we managed just fine at home on our own. He was amazed – he thought we had servants, like all rich Americans do! I let him know that servants are actually not that common in Australia 🙂 (It’s different in Indonesia and Malaysia of course.)

They were so sweet. We gave them personal tips even though official room-based tips were already charged and paid for. I hope it helps them get back home and stay home sooner.

And that was the end of a wonderful adventure in Alaska. We want to go back and do a longer cruise to Kodiak Island, which would take us to Glacier Bay again. This time, we take a better camera!