First day in Juneau-hostels,cruises and alcohol!
Trip Start
Apr 24, 2008
1
8
19
Trip End
Jun 02, 2008
Juneau,
Alaska,
United States
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Debs: Pops is now a shit head too! Yay I am the only person free from the poo!
Poppy: We dragged ourselves out of bed obscenely early to be at the harbour by 7.20 am to get on a boat trip up the fjords to see some glaciers which we had actually booked several days in advance (if you can believe it!) The trip was amazing, it took all day and we motored up Tracy Arm Fjord through massive black cliffs covered in snow. It got colder and colder as we went and there started to be little bits of ice in the water, then bigger bits of ice and then suddenly little icebergs which were unbelievably blue and ice stretching across the whole fjord which looked really thin but when you got closer you could see it extended down into the water and was actually quite thick in places. The brilliant captain who kept up a runnning commentary during most of the trip including a fascinating monologue on the rising price of fuel which had caused him to stop giving out free doughnuts to passengers (he was absolutely hilarious in a totally deadpan way) weaved us in and out of the ice and got us really close to two massive glaciers which were totally awe-inspiring. They looked like massive craggy blue waves rushing towards you between the mountains, totally magnificent. We stopped by one of them for quite a while hoping it would 'calve' (that a bit of it would break off into the sea and make and iceberg, they do actually call it calving) but although there were several massive echoing cracking noises from it and some rocks fell off one of the cliffs with an almighty crash the glacier itself refused to perform for us. We were also really lucky with the wildlife and saw several humpback whales, one quite close, the others were mostly just distant puffs of water and curving black backs but still amazing to see. We also saw a school of porpoises, a mountain goat climbing a seemingly vertical rock face, a couple of seals and a black bear. Admittedly the bear was so far up a mountain that he was really just a black speck but you could definitely tell he was a bear, once the boat guys had pointed him out that is!!! It was a brilliant trip and we have about a million pictures of glaciers and icebergs which all look the same-success!!!
We also got chatting to a group of 3 other brits who were staying in the hostel as well and it turned out that they had also come from Sitka where they'd been on a geology/marine biology conference thing. This information meant that we then spent the rest of the trip asking (probably stupid) questions about what exactly a fjord is and what different types of rock there were, very handy people to have on that sort of trip! They were also very good fun and joined in with our very mature games of 'I'm thinking of someone famous' so we decided to go out for a meal together when we got back. The Lonely planet had been enticing us with talk of all you can eat salmon bakes, massive fish and seafood buffets, so we took its advice and went to the one recommended. Sadly the LP failed us for possibly one of the first times, we ended up in a massive barn where we were the only people there with a slightly crazy waitress who apparently spoke about 15 languages and her reply to Matt asking if he could change his order was to ask him how old he was, announce that she had sons older than him and then walked off-quite odd!! We decided against the all you can eat and went for a sampler plate which consisted of lukewarm but very nice baked salmon, battered halibut which was fine but nothing very exciting, horrible beef ribs which I think were just left over bones from the butchers, coleslaw and cornbread which seemed to be a cross between spongecake and scone. It all went down pretty well with a few pitchers of beer but sadly not the seafood feast we were hoping for. We drowned our sorrows afterwards in a local bar which had not only free pool but also Magners on tap (we haven't had decent cider since we got to Canada, they don't seem to drink it here which is clearly outrageous!) so by the time we got back to the hostel in time for our midnight curfew we were sufficiently merry to throw caution to the wind and dig out our secret alcohol stash(shock horror!) Still feeling a little bit like naughty school kids we holed up in the girls dormitory with our contraband and proceeded to have a fight with strawberry liquorice sticks which act amazingly well as whips and left most people with red wheals on their arms-we are all so mature!! It was a very entertaining night and by some miracle we didn't get busted, oh the joys of hostels!!
Debs: I'm very upset as several of my red liquorice whips went missing after said fight, only to be found 2 days later under the beds on the other side of the room! AND I still had the whip marks across my arm in the morning, Matt is vicious with a candy wand!
