After yet another comfortable night’s sleep in our small but perfectly formed cabin, we headed up for breakfast at 7.45am. We have not minded or noticed not having a balcony. For the time, we have spent in the cabin it would not have been worth the extra £1000 each. Equally it had not exactly been the weather to sit on one either.
Today we had docked on Baranof Island to visit the old capital of Alaska – Sitka. This town still has evidence of when Alaska was part of Russia and we had been looking forward to visiting. It was also the setting for the film ‘The Proposal’, even if it wasn’t actually filmed here.
The excursions here were expensive and my research had shown that we could do what we wanted under our own steam, saving I thought about £200 and not having to suffer waiting on tour buses for other people which is another personal bugbear of mine.
Speaking about bugbears of mine another couple of things I have found increasingly annoying this trip have been firstly people who get to the front of the food counters in the Lido Market and then dither about what to take or what they want. They may have been queuing for a while to get to that point, so why not make your minds during that time?
Another one is the number of Americans who have zero spatial awareness of people around them whether in corridors, on stairs or pavements etc. I can confirm they are not the most important person in the world and other people do exist and live in ‘their’ world and they are not the only person in the room.
Rant for today over, we made our way off the ship at 8.15am. The dock was some 5 miles from Sitka itself and we had been told to try and get the free shuttle bus as early as possible as there was a larger ship than ours due to dock one hour after us.
Our first impression of Sitka with a population of 8000 was not that favourable. It seemed to be a sprawled out small town with a concentration of tourist shops in the centre. The shuttle driver told us with tongue in cheek that there were only 3 shops for locals and their motto was ‘If we haven’t got it – you don’t need it’.
Our plan was to then catch the local Blue Line bus to visit the ‘Fortress of the Bear’ bear sanctuary. The shuttle bus dropped us to where the local buses were lined up and we got on the Blue Line. The bus driver informed us that our stop was the last on the line and that the fee was a whole $1 each which we had to put into a clear Perspex box. The driver then had to fill in paperwork at each stop and radio each time how many had got on and off. It was a very manual and excessive process for the half a dozen or so passengers. Our route which was another 5 miles involved a couple of loops and double backing of ourselves for stops before we headed out of Sitka itself along the water’s edge. We could see Salmon jumping out of the water as we drove along.
There was a 200m walk from the last bus stop to the Fortress of the Bear. It was not a very auspicious looking building and as always, the cruise excursions programme had built it up to appear to be much more than it was. I suppose that is how they try to justify their high prices.
We paid our $15 admission fees each. The centre was established by one man in an old water treatment works. It housed bears where the mother had been shot for stealing food from the town. The policy had been until this was set up for any cubs to have been euthanised. There was no release policy for the bears in here as not only had they now ‘humanised’ but they had too many bears already here in the wild to warrant releasing them.
The bears were foraging for food when we arrived that is hidden for them daily. Despite being in an enclosure they looked content and although obviously very powerful ferocious animals still appeared soft and cuddly. We decided to leave the sanctuary just as a tour bus from the ship arrived offloading lots of people.
Our excursion had cost us a total of $17 each, somewhat cheaper than the $129 each if we had paid for an organised trip and we had not done so in a crowd.
We caught the bus back with some workers from a local cannery factory and were soon back in town just as the rain started. Sitka was definitely better than Juneau but still not really pretty and the shops all seemed to have the same sort of tat in them. There were a few shops advertised as Russian or Russian owned. Karen was curious enough to want to go in and see what they were selling but determined that she would not spend any money in case it in anyway benefitted Putin.
After a while, we had had enough of seeing the same thing in the rain and then walking along the waterfront and caught the shuttle back to the ship.
On board we had some quick lunch (a pizza for me) and then went and sat in the Crows Nest. Eventually we were joined again by T&G and there we sat for about 3 hours. Karen & I had a couple of hot drinks to start with but then moved onto some bubbles followed by more bubbles and then maybe some more. Karen did have a beer as well before we left. Our server who liked to keep calling me Mr Karl also kept bringing the Brownie Biscotti’s to keep up our substance. At one point there was a very loud cheer went up from those sitting by the window as they and then everyone else including us saw an Orca jumping in front of the ship.
The captain did warn us that there would be gale force winds and when we stood up from our seats the ship was indeed very wobbly and not at all helped by the alcohol that had been consumed.
Dinner tonight was again at The Dining Room. It was also the ships ‘Orange’ night and lots of people including Karen were dressed in Orange. Also, in honour of that much of the menu had a Dutch theme. It was all good.
Then we all went to the Theatre to see the comedy magician. His patter was not great and 2 of the tricks he performed were exactly we had seen performed better a couple of weeks back at the Cromer Pier Show. His finale was clever though although we both had a feeling that we had seen Derren Brown do something similar.
I was very tired after this and so we back to our cabin as we knew we needed to set a 6am alarm for the next day. We also decided to order a breakfast in our cabin for 6.15am and so completed the card and hung it on our outside door handle before turning our lights off for the day.
