Alaska - Cruise Diary Hubbard Glacier

 Saturday. The day finally arrived to join the cruise ship, Golden Princess (of Princess Cruises). The cruise is 7 days and will take us down to Vancouver in Canada passing through Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan ports in Alaska. I was surprised that Anchorage was not too busy with tourists given the ship carries about 3000 people. I later found out that the ship had come from Tokyo so many people were already on board transiting and only a small number like us were joining for the Alaskan journey. I’ve only been on one cruise as a kid with my family and Deb has never been on a cruise so she was quite excited. The bus transfer to the ship was about a 2 hour journey from Anchorage to a small town called Whittier where the ship was docked. The weather was crap to say the least. Cold, windy and wet was the order of the day so we were glad to finally board the ship mid afternoon. The crew and passengers were a very diverse bunch of people from all corners of the globe. We noticed pretty quickly that cruising is an older person’s sport as were feeling quite young amongst the passengers. We also lacked a walking aid of some sort as there was a big collection of walking sticks, scooters and wheel chairs getting around. When we got off the bus there were two lines to queue in – elite level passengers and ‘the others’. We were in ‘the others’ and the whole bus except 4 of us, went into the elite level passengers because they have done multiple cruises – like I said, cruising is an old person’s sport. Wow, we were feeling very inexperienced. The conversation and chatter amongst the elders is all about how many cruises they have done and where they’ve been. These folks know all the routines of cruising.

 

Our cabin was quite comfortable and we had our own balcony. Deb was getting more excited as she read all the information, logged onto the ship wi-fi and started planning her daily adventures. There are so many activities to keep everyone busy. We checked out the spa and fitness area and I might be being presumptuous, but I’m not sure the treadmills will be too popular. We checked out the running track outside on deck 7 but the freezing weather is not conducive to using that. We spent time exploring the ship and trying to work out front from back (or forward from aft as they say). We have an elephant in the cabin above us. I can’t understand how people walk so heavy and tend to run from one side of the cabin to the other about 50 times. What the fuck do people do? We finally closed our curtains around 10pm and it was still light outside so the days are going to be very long it seems.

Sunday. We woke to find the same weather as yesterday…cold, wet and windy. This day was cruising all day downwards to the Yakuta Bay where Hubbard glacier awaited us. It was a rock n roll cruise for the day due to the bad weather but it was ok thankfully. Breakfast was nice, a challenge to not overdose on calories. The food on board is plentiful. We have stuck to the buffet at the moment as we are too lazy to put on good pants to go the dining room. We are in heaven as they have Australian bacon and custard. I went to an acupuncture presentation this morning and Deb went to some photography talk.

Hubbard Glacier – man it’s huge and photos do not do it justice. According to Lonely Planet, this is the longest tidewater glacier in the world. From what I can understand, the glacier was 76 mile wide in the 80s and has receded and surged over the years and is now 8 mile wide. It is Alaska’s most active glacier. It was overcast which did not allow the full colours to show but it was huge and the ship did a few 360 spins to allow everyone plenty of time to look at it and take photos. There were lots of ice blocks in the water and I was having Titanic fears but we were quite safe it seems.  

Not much else to see today but I ended up getting some acupuncture for my shoulder. So far so good. We’ve spoken to a few people around the place as they’ve been lost or being friendly passengers. I am waiting for bingo to be scheduled as I’m keen to relive my younger years when my mum would call bingo numbers for a local fundraising organisation and my sister who was a legend at scanning sheets of tickets quicker than I could say lickity-split !!

And it's never too cold for ice cream !!