Alaska’s icy waters will surely melt your heart
Within 24 hours of sailing out of Vancouver bound for Alaska, I’m watching fog retreat towards the Inside Passage’s forested coastline.
In the distance, I can see several reminders of the state’s colourful history, including the onion-domed church in Sitka, a port town settled by Russian explorers in the 1700s.
This seven-day cruise is jam-packed with eye candy. In Juneau, America’s most remote state capital, the harbour is lined with colourful clapboard houses and the Red Dog Saloon contains a pistol belonging to notorious gunfighter Wyatt Earp. Beyond the city are the ice caves of the Mendenhall Glacier and Tongass National Forest.
Our ship, Holland-America Line’s Koningsdam, has an abundance of art, as well as nine restaurants – four where you can eat for free and the rest requiring a supplement. Events include wine-tastings, documentary screenings and musical acts – from jazz to rock’n’roll. Despite these temptations, I opt to visit a musher’s camp and fly through the forest on a wheeled trike pulled by huskies.
The next stop, Skagway, was a boomtown during the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s. Our coach tour along the Klondike Highway passes locations with names such as Dead Horse Gulch. Our guide shows us photos of gold rushers – bent double from the weight of their provisions – as they scrambled down the 50km Chilkoot Trail towards the goldfields.
As the ship heads back toward Vancouver, I’m cautiously hopeful for a bear sighting at our next stop, Ketchikan. Five minutes into our tour, the guide points to a cub hiding in the nook of a tree. Seconds later, another lumbers beneath our boardwalk. Soon I’ve seen so many I don’t even reach for my camera when one paws a fat salmon out of the water.
The tour finishes at a rescue centre for birds. My favourite is an enormous bald eagle, hit by a car and who now lives a leisurely life being hand-fed fish.
There are three days at sea within the week. Glacier Bay National Park is the star of the show with its huge plains of sparkling ice. What a thrill!
A seven-day Alaska Inside Passage cruise on Koningsdam, departing and arriving into Vancouver, from
€1,176pp (hollandamerica.com). Multiple airlines fly from Dublin to Vancouver, from €710.