Solo Boarding
Josh drives me to the airport in the morning, via a drive through café – what a great idea. My flight goes via Salt Lake City. It was cheaper for me to catch a bus to Boise then fly to Vancouver via Salt Lake City, than it was to just catch a flight from Salt Lake City to Vancouver. Go figure. The flight is uneventful. I sit next to a guy who reps for Oakley, so we fill in time talking about snowboarding and wakeboarding. I haven’t organised a transfer from the airport to the cruise ship I’m boarding, but they told me I could do it on arrival for $30 one way. The price is a bit steep, but since I don’t know where the boat goes from, it’s the easiest way to do it. My plan is to check in, then go and meet my friend Remi for lunch.
I find the transfer counter and there is no bus for 45 minutes. I ask if they can take just my luggage so I can go for lunch. They say no, so I say fine, I’ll wait for the bus. They get a bit confused with this and eventually offer to take my bag without me. They don’t charge me for this. I jump on the Skytrain into town, so the entire trip costs me $2.50. I’m happy with this development.
I meet Remi and we walk along the waterfront. It’s another beautiful day in Vancouver. We stop at a bay front café but we’re running tight on time, so after lunch we head to the cruise terminal. It proves quite difficult to find the entry. You’d think it would be well signposted, but I guess most people get delivered to the boat, so don’t have to think for themselves. The entry process looks complex, but all the queue corrals are empty. I fill in a health form, have my hands sprayed with disinfectant, exchange my passport details for a keycard that is my room key and ship account, then find my way onboard.
I find my room and Lana – the roommate I arranged through a website for people who want to go on a cruise but have no-one to travel with – has left a note to say she’ll be back soon. The room is bigger than I expected. It has wood-panelled furniture, which includes twin beds, storage cupboards and a television unit. The bathroom is small but well-designed, although I’ve never seen a smaller shower unit. I unpack, quite excited about the idea of staying in one room and sleeping in one bed for a whole week.
Lana comes back and we chat. She seems nice enough, although we have very little in common. She’s Russian-American and has been on a number of cruises with people met via the website, as her husband runs his own business so has limited free time.
After the evacuation drill where we assemble on deck and learn how to put on our lifejackets, we go to check out the welcome party on the pool deck. I have a cocktail – something fruity with rum – as we watch the cruise staff get people up and dancing to the band. Soon we are away and cruising.
We have a few dinner choices, but it turns out the specialty restaurants require additional payment. I’m determined to make the most of the things included in the cruise price, so I’ll be sticking with the standard restaurants. We head to Four Seasons and have a delicious three-course dinner.
There is a welcome show in the evening with a little bit of dancing and a comedian. He’s a funny, round man in a cowboy hat who does a good job of warming us up, although that ends the night for me.
No Dry Land in Sight
We have a day at sea today and the weather is not co-operating, so after the buffet breakfast, I head to a dance class: the Cha Cha Cha. I don’t learn anything new, but it’s fun and I meet a couple of people. It’s interesting to see how the teachers manage the group – not very well. They seem to think everyone is in a couple, as they don’t set up partners, so some people drop out as there is no provision for those flying solo.
There is a schedule of events published every day, so I pick out a few quizzes to attend – name that tune using Broadway shows and daily trivia. Lana and I also go to a presentation about the shore excursions to help us with decision-making. I meet a few people through these and sign up for a singles dinner the next night to meet more people. For my shore excursions, I go all out with kayaking, cycling and the crème de la crème, a helicopter flight and dog sledding. This is my last hurrah, after all. My Vietnam volunteer assignment is confirmed so my next stop will be Australia for an orientation.
For dinner, we go to the more formal restaurant, Seven Seas, only to find it is pretty much the same as Four Seasons and has the same menu. Tonight there’s an obvious choice – lobster. I stick with the seafood theme and have scallops for the appetiser. It is supposed to be scallops with asparagus, but it’s actually a bed of green beans with one spear of asparagus laid across the top and three of the smallest scallops I’ve ever seen. I honestly didn’t know scallops come that small. I think they are the ones that should have been thrown back. The lobster makes up for it though, as does the chocolate mousse cake thing I consume for dessert, which is supposedly low fat. Is that even possible?
I’m starting to notice that Lana has a few quirks and with her abrupt manner, can be quite rude sometimes, although I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be. At dinner, she orders two cups of tea. She drinks one while the other one is brewing, then tops up the first one while she drinks the second…repeatedly. She goes through two full teapots. She must have a bladder of steel. Later, in the room she wants to recharge her camera battery even though she hasn’t used the camera. She does it compulsively every night.
The evening performance is a dance show, mostly Latin dance styles but with some funky cirque de soleil-style acrobatics thrown in. After the show, I discover my excursion has been cancelled – on this entire boat of thousands, I am the only person who signed up. I go to the front desk to book an alternative. They have a different kayaking trip that is cheaper, so I sign up for that one. This has the added benefit of starting two hours later than the original one, so I have until 8.50am to lie in.
The Rainiest Place on Earth
Despite the delayed start, I still get up early as room service calls and wake us up to tell us our breakfast is coming. It’s half an hour earlier than we ordered it. Considering we ordered it for 7am, you can imagine how excited I am at the idea of it being even earlier. Since I’m awake, I figure I may as well head into the town and see the sights, as I won’t have any time after the kayaking.
Outside, it’s grey and raining. I own nothing waterproof. I walk through the town in the rain and buy postcards, stopping in at the historical creek district, which used to be lined with brothels. This area of Alaska was famous for being ‘lawless’ during the gold rush era, where gold miners drank in the taverns and played in the brothels. It turns out Ketchikan also has a ridiculously large amount of rain, about 12 feet a year. Joy. I try and find some free WiFi too, but the spot the cruise staff have told me about is outside in the open, so not do-able in the rain.
Back at the dock, a small group of us gather and are led to a bus where we meet people from the other couple of cruise ships that are docked in Ketchikan. Despite the rain, the kayaking is still on. There are about twelve of us ignorant enough of the weather conditions in the area to have signed up. I’m so pathetically damp by this time that one of the ladies gives me her disposable plastic poncho. It’s a bit like wearing a garbage bag, but at least it keeps two thirds of me dry.
At the kayaking base, we are given proper wet weather gear to put on over our clothes and then we head down to the water. It is a dry entry into the boat, directly from the pier. I would have taken a photo, but it’s about this time that my camera lens jams and will not open again. Damn. I opt for a single kayak since I have enough kayaking experience to deal with both paddling and steering. We go out into the bay and circle around Eagle Island. It’s really pretty, despite the rain and we see a few eagles quite close up. There are also a few salmon boats out and you can tell why, as we see salmon jumping in all directions.
We spend a few hours out on the water, a third of which is against the current, so we get a bit of a workout before we head back in. In the shed, I borrow a knife and pry the camera lens out, so I manage to take a couple of photos.
We are back on the boat by 2.30, ready to set sail again, so I fill in time by going to the ship’s version of The Weakest Link, just to watch. There is a family sitting in front of me who, one by one, ask if they can use the spare chairs at my table. I end up sitting at the table alone, with my one chair, so they ask if I’d like to join them. They are a lovely group and it’s nice to have different people to talk to. They also talk me into going in the competition. I come third, so that's respectable.
I dress nicely for the singles dinner, which Lana doesn’t show up for, even though we spoke earlier in the day about it. There are three lovely older French-Canadian ladies, two Canadian guys travelling with an Australian girl, another Canadian guy and his sister and myself. We have fun, even though we are only a small group. I also thought someone from the ship was meant to host, but it is just us.
The Canadian/Australian team (Casey, Devo and Jenny) suggest I meet them to go to the evening show, which is the comedian again. Devo’s there on time, but stays outside chatting up one of the photographers, and the other two are late, so I end up on my own anyway. Doesn’t matter. I’m used to it. I meet up with them afterwards for a drink, but turn in early as I have another early start tomorrow.
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