Anchorage, Alaska

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Happy Birthday Tony !!!

We arrived in the morning at 5:00am so it was much too early to check-in to our hotel. However, we hailed a taxi and went there anyway to drop off our luggage and then went off in search of somewhere to have breakfast. Well, it is early Sunday morning and it is Alaska so no one, I mean no one gets up that early here, not to mentioned having to open shops or restaurants. So we walked around and around and around until eventually we found a little cafe down by the train depot which was actually open. There were 3 police cars parked outside so this could mean one of two things – something shonky was going down or it was the place where the police had their breakfast. Lucky for us it was the latter so inside we went and sat down in this rather homely cafe (looked like something out of one of those B-grade American movies). Anyway, the food turned out to be good and reasonably priced with the people rather friendly. I had my first taste of reindeer sausage. Tony is usually the first to try something different but I beat him to it this time. Don’t be put off by the name as the reindeer is farmed, just like our venison. Actually it isn’t really reindeer as this is the term used for tame caribou and it is the caribou that you eat....so there’s you don’t have to worry about my eating up all of Santa’s sleigh pullers as they are the tame variety they do not make it to the dinner plate.

After breakfast we walked around for a while down by the river to look for salmon but there wasn’t any to see, a few weeks too early apparently. We would find out later that this was going to be a common thing for us – no wildlife sightings. We visited the tourist info centre to find out about where to catch the bus to the Native Heritage & Cultural Centre as this was one of the places high on our list for this visit to Anchorage. We found the bus okay and off we went. This was a great place to experience and learn about the different native cultures of Alaska. There were several villages and dwellings built like they would have been years ago and each place had a clan representative explaining about their way of life and the structure of the dwellings and tools they used. We learnt that most of the natives were Athabascans and that they were related to the native American Sioux and Navajo. After visiting the villages we went to watch some native dancing and they invited people up to try it. Tony volunteered and donned a pair of the native fur mittens before attempting one of their dances....he was really enjoying himself.
After leaving the cultural centre, we visited the Anchorage markets. I purchased a few things there....a couple of photos of the Aurora Borealis and a cat made from buffalo horn (I hope I can get it through customs. I was rather distressed seeing all the animal fur stalls here (as well as the many fur shops on the main street) but is have to accept that this is the Alaskan way of life. However, I feel it is not right in this day and age to be selling furs in market stalls, or anywhere else for that matter, to make profit. The natives here still kill the animals and use the furs but they do it with respect and only when they need to. However, much to my distress, fur trapping in Alaska is still legal.

In the late afternoon/evening we went on a 50klm bicycle ride along the Alaskan coastline. Lucky for us at this time of year the mosquitoes are not around so it made for a fairly pleasant ride. My knees were giving out towards the end of the ride though. We stopped regularly along the way to take photos. One of the stops was right near the beginning of the airport runway and, as luck would have it, a plane was coming in to land. What an awesome sight having a 767 fly just a few metres over your head (quite noisy too). My daughter Christina would be most envious. We had the choice of doing an out and back or a round trip so we opted for the round trip which enabled us to go via the lake and light plane airport. It was also rather strange being able to ride through the actual airport across the runways with just a warning sign to stop and give way to aircraft – hello...who’s going to NOT give way to a plane taking off ? We’ve never seen so many light aircraft and float planes parked in one spot ! All the planes in Alaska have right of way on the roads so most of them have aircraft warning signs and are criss-crossed with cables holding bright orange balls for the pilots to see. Our supposed 2.5hr bike ride ended up taking us about 3.5 hrs but we enjoyed taking our time. Although the bikes had gel saddles I still ended up pretty sore in the never regions <grin>.

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