We left Vancouver yesterday at about 4:00 p.m. Pacific time, sailed all night and will be at sea all day today arriving in Ketchikan about 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. So how does one keep oneself occupied for a whole day on a cruise ship? Of course, there’s the eating that takes a good portion of the day but in between the overindulging, we had to investigate what Holland America had to offer.
After breakfast, we went to a “When & Where to Spot Wildlife” presentation – nicely done – learned some pretty interesting things. Alaska is home to 30,000 to 70,000 bald eagles – more than all other states combined; there are two kinds of Orcas – the resident and the transient, subdivided by northern and southern. You can spot the difference by looking at the dorsal fin – residents are rounded with an inner curve whereas transient are larger, more defined and are a straight triangular shape. We also found out that due to a myriad of circumstances, there are only 7 southern transient orcas remaining. There are five species of salmon – chum, sockeye, king, silver and pink – and the Ketchikan river is the only river where all five species come to spawn. After that, we all sort of did our thing until right before lunch when we attended another presentation on the Pacific Giants i.e. whales!! Oh and between the two presentations, I was sitting on my verandah when serious screaming erupted from next door – Lia had spotted a whale!!! She actually got a pic of it as well, although to the average eye, it’s pretty hard to tell the lump in the ocean is a whale. Lia got the picture certified later, however, by our Wildlife Guide who confirmed it was a humpback. The presenter did a great job outlining the various types of whales, their migratory routes and why we are likely to see some at this time of year. His main focus, however, was the importance of the discovery of whale song. It is a fascinating subject in that, these giant creatures have a method of communication that rivals any other species on earth and it’s global.
After lunch there was some shopping on board, some napping (bodies still not sure what time it really was), a little swimming for the youngsters, some reading and walking all over the ship to find various places mentioned by the cruise director, Jose. Following dinner (yes, we were eating again!), we retired to our separate rooms for a bit – Nora and I watched Aquaman 2 (we watched Aquaman last night!) while I became increasingly frustrated with the spotty internet on board – in fact, I will be posting this almost two days late because, at sea, the internet is unreliable and my phone is useless. I even thought my blog was actually broken or corrupted and I was very sad…… (Note – upon returning to civilization, I was able to rearrange the posts so they actually appear in chronological order.)
We rounded out the night by attending the first onboard live entertainment – 4 singers – Ireland, Scotland, Portugal and England – and 7 dancers. They sang what they titled “Timeless” hits and it was actually quite enjoyable especially when they sang Never Enough from The Greatest Showman!!
As Nora and I hit the hay – and boy, was I ready for that – we turned our clocks back another hour so we are now 4 hours behind Webster – I had always thought Alaska was on Pacific time but it actually has its very own time zone! Who knew!!
Back on dry land tomorrow – Ketchikan, Alaska’s First City and the Salmon Capital of the World.
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