3rd cruise day - Ketchikan

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We woke up this morning with the ship in port at Ketchikan (Alaska), a small fishing town that swells massively when, as there was today, 4 cruise ships in town - that’s 8000 more people. The tourist industry just goes bang when this happens. We got a local newspaper that shows on average about 3 ships visit here each day for the next week ! the tourists are so important here, that the town puts out crossing supervisors to stop the traffic, so tourists can safely cross the city streets. It was cloudy and about 15 degrees but otherwise good weather. We just visited shops and walked down all the local streets. The houses are gray, made from weatherboards and not too flash. Most of the town is literally built on the side of a mountain, so they have cut into the mountainside to make roads and build houses and shops. The local fast flowing river runs thru part of town from the nearby mountains and many shops are built on pylons over the river’s edge especially in Creek Street which runs into the harbour. So, to visit shops, you walk along the wooden footpath, 10m up over the river bank. The waterfront where the cruise ships berth, is situated right next to and parallel to the main street. We found a great Trading Post shop that was just one of the best hardware stores seen. As we have found before at other US and Canadian stores, this one also offered more choices and different products that are available back home - pity we didn’t need anything just then. The waterfront had many seaplane businesses, with takeoffs and landing happening every few minutes presumably all vying for tourist custom. The boat left on time at 2.00pm. We didn’t do much in the afternoon after walking 16, 000 steps this morning (although we did squeeze in a lecture about Alaskan animals and plants). If we haven’t mentioned this before, there’s no internet access on board for your laptop, unless you fork out $5 per minute.

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