Cruise News

---

The SS Zaandam docked this morning in Vancouver after a week cruising the inside passage with about a thousand American ship mates. It was a kind of Clayton's visit to America, with just about every state in the country represented on board. It was a surprise to hear just how distinctive the accents are in America - far more than we heard in England which is always held up as the stock example of regional accent variation. The corridors of the ship reverberated with the sound of the Deep South, then New York Jewish, then mid-west, so we really began to notice the enormous variety of people that make up the nation. Many of them seemed anxious to know what the rest of the world thought of them as a nation - I think they feel a little persecuted and uneasy about the state of play with the Middle East and I began to feel really sorry for them after a while. It was kind of like they were trying so hard to be nice to everyone and couldn't really understand why the world seems to have turned against them. I also felt sorry for them when I realised that they don't understand the concept of long service leave. Most Americans only seem to get a couple of weeks holiday a year, and many rarely took any at all. They said they were often too busy at work to take leave and what is worse, their holidays don't seem to accumulate - they have to use them or lose them, pay included. They were absolutely astounded that standard holidays in Australia were four weeks long and that everyone accumulated so much extra leave after ten years employment. They really found it hard to comprehend, but when it was explained, they seemed to console themselves with the thought that shorter holidays were better for the economy. I couldn't wrap my head around that one!

The cruise itself has been a wonderful way to wind down after our travels. We laughed really hard when we saw our room. We expected a tiny submarine style cabin, but when we opened the door to our room, the opulence of space was overwhelming. I had to ask the steward if they hadn't made a mistake and we spent the first few minutes just standing in the middle of the room and laughing. There was enough space in that room to set up permanent residence - a sofa, dresser, loads of hanging cupbaords, and the shower was big enough to fit three people in it. It was so comfortable it was difficult to drag ourselves out and onto the main decks.

In fact, the ship was so comfortable that we weren't keen on exploring land when the ship stopped at each port. There wasn't much to see in port anyway. Most of the towns we stopped at seemed to be owned by the cruise companies and they had set up so many gem stores that you had to walk a few blocks into Skagway and Ketchikan before you came to the real local stores. They held on board shopping seminars designed to direct the passengers to the fantastic 80% off sales held in "all the best shops" in port. The locals told us that all those diamond shops closed down and boarded up their shop fronts as soon as the cruise season was over - not a good look - so the local schools took their paint sets down there and got the children to paint pictures on the boards in order to beautify the towns. It was unfortunate the cruise ship marketing machine had almost obliterated any sense of a 'frontier land' that Alaska may have actually possessed.

But who are we to complain about luxury? Spa treatments, the casino, silver service meals, hot tubs, and our bed made twice a day. The weather was comfortable. We had plenty of atmospheric mist and drizzle which is apparently typical for that part of the world, but it was rarely seriously cold. On the day we sailed into Glacier Bay, the sun was shining in a perfectly blue sky. The air was cool coming off the ice fields but the deck chairs were provided with warm tarten blankets and the waiters delivered hot pea soup to us as we lounged around and admired the view. What's not to like about that?

We weren't keen on the on board entertainment which was mostly toothy grins, schmultz and cabaret razzle dazzle. It was easy to avoid it for most of the time but "Rob," the all-American cruise director, invaded the dining room on more than one occasion and led a star spangled dance routine loose amongst the waiters which was loud, tedious, and hyper self-congratulatory. I'm sure we weren't the only ones on board who would have preferred to skip dinner that night, but we did enjoy the food, so we grimaced, waved our serviettes in the air like the rest of them, and put up with it.

We had already seen plenty of glaciers in the Rockies, so we had unfortunately become a little immune to the scenery. We saw loads of bald eagles every day but alas, not much else in the way of wildlife. We had an interesting trip on a raft, floating down a glacial river in nature preserve in Haines and a fun day out on a zip-line tour in Ketchikan. The zip-line was like a series of flying foxes strung up between swaying pine trees in a rainforest. The zip-lines were interspersed with suspension bridges and took about an hour and a half to complete with a group of eight. In the Alaskan capital Juneau, we hadn't booked any tours, so we spent a little time wandering around the town before catching the local shuttle bus out to Mendenhall Glacier. It turned out to be far more relaxing and loads cheaper than if we had booked the Glacier tour with the cruise, and we got an interesting commentary from the bus driver who had been a commercial fisherman in the area and was happy to share his thoughts and stories about the industry.

The fishing industry will be the dominant memory of Alaska that we take away from our holiday here. I was constantly reminded of that old TV ad for John West where the guy shows the Chinook salmon and the "fish John West reject." The ad had that grey, misty atmosphere that we experienced up here and every place we went to reinforced the importance of the salmon fishing industry to the local region. We learned the "easiest way to remember the five types of salmon" using your hand as a memory aid. For those who are interested, there are Chum Salmon, Sockeye Salmon, King Salmon, Silver Salmon and Pinkie Salmon, so the memory aid certainly works ("Chinook" is just another name for King Salmon).

The salmon are so important to the region because they provide the major food source for the people who live here. Most of the towns are only accessible via sea or air and many people live a subsistance life-style. Indigenous people have myths that revolve around the salmon as a food source and salmon hatcheries, canneries and fishing boats are everywhere you turn. The indigenous people smoke the salmon and preserve it for winter, trading their produce with the local fisherman who rave about the taste. The famous Bald Eagle (whose image is synonymous with the might of the American nation) is plentiful in this region because they feed on the huge fish as they travel upstream to spawn. Salmon is also a vital food source for the bears who need to gorge themselves before their winter hibernation. This incredible concentration of wildlife around the rivers and streams then attracts the tourists who help massage the local economy and provide summer jobs for most of the town. We were told that salmon are one of the highest natural sources of nitrogen and that the remains of the depleted salmon even provide the high concentration of nitrogen neccessary for the plants to flourish in this harsh environment, so the salmon are heavily protected by the fisheries department which sets limits on the amount of salmon everyone can harvest each season.

Unfortunately, we were about a week early for the bears. The salmon began to arrive in Juneau on the day before we docked but the numbers were not yet high enough to entice the bears out into the open. We were lucky enough to see some Sockeye Salmon in a small creek near Mendenhall Glacier so we felt fortunate. We did also see a few seals - one quite close up in the harbour, hanging around the fishing boats and looking for a free meal. We also spotted a whale from the ship and a few porpoises, but no orcas. Today, we are in Vancouver, waiting for our flight to Honolulu tonight and then on to home. It is grey and lightly raining so our plan to go to the park and read a book has been abandoned. That's ok. There are plenty of coffee shops around and the internet cafes are much easier to spot than bears. Maybe it will be reading weather on the beach in Waikiki.

---

Photos

Excitement on Board
as our first iceburg floats by

Red Dog Saloon
Wyatt Earp checked his gun one morning but left before the pub opened. His gun is still waiting for him to return

Blue Ice
The denser the glacier, the more intense blue it is coloured

Bald Eagle
on the Chilikat river outside Haines

Misty Alaskan Coastline
on the way to Haines

Pulling up to the Glacier
and watching from the bow

SS Zaandam
docks in Ketchikan town

Diamond Traders
rubbing their hands at the thought of all those cruise passenger suckers

Suspended
over the Alaskan rainforest