Southeast Alaska

T has already written an account of our cruise through Alaska, asking if I would go again. Well, of course I would. But I thought I’d do this post a little differently, writing about the people we met, and what would I do again, or not do. And what would I recommend to anyone who wants to travel to Alaska this way?

The first people we met, before we even boarded the ship, were the staff greeting people on embarkation. The ones I talked to were all Filipino. Cruise line staff are from all over the world and you can tell this from their name tags, but I noticed it because one of them said to me, “You should get our flag next!” They were talking, of course, about my daypack and all its flag patches. Guess we need to go to the Philippines.

Getting checked in took three times as long as it took other people because somehow, our nicknames were on the booking, instead of our legal names. Check-in requires your name to match what's on your passport. Note: Never put your nickname on anything even remotely official. At best, you’ll have more forms to fill out and they will have to reprint your key cards, as they did ours. Your key card (they call it a “Sea Pass” on Celebrity) is your key to everything on board. You use it instead of a room key, as a way to pay for extras, and to get off and back on the ship. After all that mine still had my incorrect middle initial on it, but at least U.S. customs and immigration weren’t looking at key cards!

So we cleared immigration back into the U.S., even though for most of the cruise up the Inside Passage we were still in Canada. T. mentioned that if you look at a map, it seems pretty clear that Alaska belongs with Canada, not the other states with which it is not contiguous. Tell that to the Americans who, we are told, bought Alaska from the Russians when Russia was short of dough. Alaskan Natives, the people who’ve actually inhabited Alaska for tens of thousands of years, were probably surprised to hear that their land was owned by either. By the standards of the States, Native people still make up a significant proportion of Alaska’s population today: 14%.

I got lots of comments throughout the trip about my flags and all the places we have visited. You might be surprised to find backpackers on a cruise ship at all, and it certainly is an exception to our usual way of travel. Our original goal had been to go with some friends from England, because the one time we were on a cruise before, we enjoyed it so much more knowing others on board. The great thing about a cruise (one of them) is that every activity level is catered for, and each person can do as much or as little as s/he wishes, everybody joining together back at dinner or on deck. But in the end, our friends couldn’t make it, so we talked to strangers and luxuriated.

I recommend talking to strangers, especially if you’re traveling solo or as a couple. This is useful anywhere, but especially on a cruise. You’re on this ship for a week with the same people, and even though there are thousands of them, once you’ve shared a meal you do keep running into them. Our first evening in the restaurant, Maria (a shout out to our hostess) asked if we would be happy to share a table with others, and we always say yes. 

T. already wrote about our English-Tasmanian tablemates but I also want to mention the other couples, Michiganders, of whom the women had known each other since second grade. One of the men (they were both named Bill) talked to us about when he was a young man and spent some time traveling around Italy. Then in 1971, he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. “Unnecessary,” Fred said of the war.

“They’re all unnecessary,” said the other Bill quietly.

Lunchtime in the buffet was often busy. We would sit with whoever had spare seats at their table. One day this was a couple of Indian heritage who live in Florida, but told us they were originally from South Africa. We mentioned our travels there, and to Mauritius. Like everyone else who’s been there, it seems, they raved about how gorgeous Mauritius is. Another day we sat with two widows who live in the same gated community in Arkansas. “I took the Greyhound bus once,” one of them recalled. “Never again!” She explained that was because of where Greyhound buses stop in cities, i.e., downtown areas bearing little resemblance to her community. There are no businesses where they live—“only banks,” the other woman said. I am sure these women have basic human compassion for unfortunate people, but they seemed very fearful: of drugs, guns, people they don’t understand.

They had such a different view of the world and its dangers than we do, yet by the end of our conversation, we all agreed that the horrible people shown on the news must be exceptions, and that the world is not really like that. Moving between the world we’d just traveled in, of Greyhound buses and their passengers, and the passengers on cruise ships was illuminating, because they are really the same world. Everyone, as T. is fond of saying, holds a baby the same. Everyone has the same basic needs. Some people make choices the rest of us don’t understand, like sleeping outside. But everyone wants a choice…

You may have gathered that the majority of passengers were retired, or nearing retirement age. Not everyone, though. Another evening we had dinner with a young couple from Maryland, plus the woman’s father. They'd had a very adventurous day around the Mendenhall Glacier, hiking for eight miles and actually climbing on the ice, which is not something I’d want to do. It was hard to know what either man thought about the experience, as the woman talked the whole time. Quite easy to carry on a conversation with her, though.

Would I get a “stateroom” (cabin) with a verandah again? I was out on the verandah every chance I got, sitting or taking in the view. If you were cruising the Mediterranean, it would be a pretty safe bet. But paying twice as much seems steep unless you have a lot of good weather, which would be unusual in Alaska.

As it happened, we did have unusually good weather. Except at our first port of call, Ketchikan, where the weather was normal. That is to say, rainy. We did our first shore excursion, which was a hike in the Tongass National Forest. It’s the U.S.A.’s largest national forest, covering much of southeast Alaska.

Would I hike the rainforest around Ketchikan again? Yes, because it’s the best thing to do around there, if you want to see wildlife and get to know the landscape of Alaska. As it happened, we only saw small wildlife, such as the distinctive banana slug.

But that’s the thing about wildlife: there are no guarantees. We also saw spiders, huckleberries, an edible berry called salal that I tasted (forgettable), lichens, hemlock, Sitka spruce, red and yellow cedar.

Muskeg, a distinctive boggy landscape of North America

I would say book the longest hike you have time and energy for. We walked for two hours or so but with constant stops to be told about plants, etc., and the trail was very smooth and gradual, so it wasn’t hard. With any luck, you’ll see more animals than we did. Of course there were the salmon.

We ate supper relatively late that night, so had a table to ourselves. The people at the table next to us, befitting the late hour, were speaking French. I couldn’t eavesdrop effectively but I did hear them keep saying “baleine.” Had everyone seen whales but us?

Well, yes! Not that evening, when the captain had told us whales were likely and we’d shivered on deck for what seemed like hours (hence the lateness of our supper). No, the next morning in the buffet, we were just eating breakfast when a woman excitedly said there was a whale, and kindly handed me her binoculars so I could see. Neither T. nor I had our camera, but I got a good view of the whale diving down, with its fluke (tail) in the air. Then to top it all off, we saw an orca (once called “killer whale”) jumping very close to the ship. No pictures, but there they were when we weren’t expecting them, showing off right outside the windows.

About halfway through the cruise was our second port of call, Icy Strait Point. This is the only privately owned port in all of North America. It’s run by a corporation of Tlingit shareholders (pronounced “Klinkit,” they are one of the coastal Native peoples) including Liz, our guide to the Spasski River Valley, and Cookie, our bus driver, who grew up right down the street from her. Clearly, this is not like other ports of call, with their luxury stores, hotels, and chain restaurants.

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, one of seven denominations in Hoonah

Hoonah is a village of 760 people, about a mile and a half from the port. We took the shuttle bus into town.

Reggie the bus driver helps a passenger.

Hoonah is a real village, with no discernible concessions to cruise ship passengers other than a small museum and souvenirs for sale. There's a handy mnemonic for remembering the five species of Pacific salmon, and everyone in Alaska wants to tell it to you. Thumb rhymes with chum; with your index finger you can sock yourself in the eye; the king is bigger than the other four, but never stands alone; you may put silver on your ring finger; and your pinkie is the pink salmon.

I thought Hoonah was lovely. I couldn’t find a mailbox so the woman in the grocery store (there’s just one, woman and store) said she’d put it in their mail. 

A proud Native veteran of the U.S. Navy makes his--or her--feelings clear.

So anyway, back to our hike with Liz. It was just a little way down a boardwalk and she urged us all to keep quiet, to increase the likelihood of seeing bears. If you’ve seen T’s pictures you’ll know what happened next.

T. photobombed my picture, but it does show how close we were when the mother bear walked in front of us.

Luckily Michael and George were there, carrying rifles. They’ve never had to fire a shot, even in warning, but Liz said these gentlemen come along to make visitors feel better.

The bears were amazing; even Liz hadn’t expected us to get this close. 

And just because I could--my feet in the Gulf of Alaska!

She wore a raven bracelet on one wrist and an eagle on the other; we saw both birds while we were in Hoonah. A local woman was kind enough to alert us to a juvenile eagle that was in a nearby tree, and we waited long enough to see it fly.

Liz said the Tlingit have no word for goodbye, because they believe our paths are bound to cross again some day. I hated to say goodbye to Hoonah. What capped that day as the best of the cruise, though, was even more unexpected than the bears. At about 10:00 that night, the captain came on the intercom and apologized for the late announcement, but said the northern lights were visible off to port side! Once again, we don’t have any pictures, but the verandah came in handy for the aurora borealis as well.

Would I go to Icy Strait Point again? You’ll realize by now that it was a highlight of my trip—certainly my favorite excursion on shore. A couple of important caveats, however. The first I’ve already mentioned: wildlife is wild, and you never know what you are going to see, what the weather is going to be like, etc. We had what by all accounts was an exceptionally close encounter with the bears. In fact, in researching this blog I found people complaining on TripAdvisor that they had booked this identical tour and not seen bears at all. Of course, they were disappointed but they seemed to think wildlife was guaranteed. You should go to a wildlife sanctuary or zoo for that experience.

There is certainly potential to see bears at other locations in Alaska and I would recommend taking any hike that promises that potential. The hikes are guided and safe, and you will not be sorry if you do see a bear! The other caveat about Icy Strait Point is that most cruise ships don’t call there, because (as far as I could see) there is only room for one ship. All the other days, there were at least four other ships in port with us. Liz told us that they like to keep Hoonah the way it is. That’s what makes it exceptional, also.

This post is now long enough, so this is probably the time to bid a formal farewell to my London 2012 jacket. It was the one piece of gear I had with the actual Olympic Rings (since I volunteered at the Paralympics), and it’s lasted much longer than I thought it would. It’s been clipped to my backpack on five continents and kept me dry on a very rainy day in Hue, Vietnam. But, the rain resistance finally wore off around Ketchikan, and we can’t afford to carry anything extra around. So it has joined some other items in a clothing donation bin. I hope it keeps the wind, at least, off someone who may not have any jacket otherwise.

Onward to Skagway

When we return, more Alaska!