Sarah Daniell sails to Alaska on Norwegian Cruise Line’s Bliss, the first voyage to the Great Land for 2022
The odds are good, but the goods are odd, says Peggy, our bus driver in Juneau. The "goods" are Alaskan men, who apparently outnumber women two to one in the southwestern capital city. Odds are in favour of that person behind the wheel of your tour bus also being a comedian. And in Alaska the humour is served dry, like the biting spring air.
Alaska, the mythical 49th state, has been mined in ways both tangible and intangible. By colonisation, logging, fishing, gold and by our own wildly romantic imaginings. Writers, prospectors and soul searchers have for centuries been drawn to the so-called Last Frontier to find meaning or a fortune. The pull is strong and the journey there long, however you approach it and from whatever direction. Nature and geography prevail on a formidable scale. Mountains, fiords, rivers of ice, forest. Whales, wolves, bears, eagles. Although you rarely see a wild living wolf in Alaska. Scientists reckon there are about 6000-7000 left. Alaska, too, is a fragile enigma.
Alaska - twice the size of Texas. Sold by the Russians to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million. One of the last states in North America to be mapped and explored, by Western definitions.
The Alaska I know came from childhood books: Jack London's White Fang and the Call of the Wild - classic parables for the brutality of life, violence and survival - the drive to claim, tame and conquer set in the Klondike gold rush. The Great Land, where men and women and dog/wolf hybrids are taken to the very edges of nature and themselves. In White Fang, when the cub and his mother stray to the edge of the Indian camp "there was something calling him out there in the open. His mother heard it too."
Alaska in song, film and literature. North to Alaska, the song. Anchorage, by Michelle Shocked: "Texas always seemed so big, but you know you're in the largest state of the union when you're anchored down in Anchorage." Northern Exposure in the 90s - a doctor from New York moves to a remote Alaskan town. Into the Wild - the true story of a young man searching for meaning outside the shackles of consumerism and parental expectation. Jonathan Raban's magnificent Passage to Juneau covers 1600km, all alone. Like us, he departs from Seattle for the Inside Passage, the route between Puget Sound and the Gulf of Alaska. Unlike us, he is on a 35ft ketch.
To visit Alaska after more than two years locked in a pandemic felt almost revolutionary. From Lockdown to Alaska. The call was strong. Liberation by ship. Baptism by ice.
There is an ice room on Norwegian Bliss, the 333m floating small town that leaves from Seattle, Washington, on its first voyage of the 2022 cruising season. If it’s not chilly enough leaning against a railing on the upper decks as the ship carves through the North Pacific Ocean, head for Mandara Spa. For full restorative benefits, it’s recommended you spend 20 minutes in the ice room. I managed about 30 seconds before my frozen feet marched me right out again.
There's also a salt room, a steam room and a sauna and heated loungers where you can recline and meditate on the ship's wake through floor-to-ceiling windows while sipping water infused with fresh oranges. In the hot tub, I'm joined by a young couple. Hi, we're from Alabama, where y'all from? He is covered in tattoos; she has a jaunty blonde ponytail. They tell me they'll celebrate their wedding anniversary with a helicopter ride up to Juneau Ice Field.
There are couples everywhere. Celebrating anniversaries, certainly hooking up. There are the so-young they probably have no clue where they are, and the so-old they probably have no clue where they are. There are champion karaoke couples who declare their love on the mic after a few too many rum cocktails. There are families. There are the frail, with walking frames and the 20-somethings slaying it on the dance floor at the Social Bar till 3am. Pre-pubescent children, attached to their phones, oblivious to the landscape, a continuous pan-shot of miraculous beauty.
Among the 1600 passengers on board are people from all points on the compass. It's a buffet of humanity. All you can watch; an anthropologist's dream. Some pimp their cabin doors with hand-crafted signs. "Dickie and Becky" are "Cruising Through Life One Port At A Time". There's nautical bunting and a cross-stitched "Sailing Away" outside cabin 15220. Further along, "The Cosentino Cabin" and a "Come Sail Away" invitation is accompanied by a handwritten message on a whiteboard, to someone, or perhaps everyone to "meet us at the Observation Lounge 11.30-12pm". Twenty floors, layers of possibilities. Fruit sculpture - make a tropical garden from carved pineapple and carrots. Language workshops. A waterslide, Laser Tag, roof-top go-karts.
It's a warmish spring day when we set sail. Mount Rainer, the active volcano is resplendent in white. Yachts and ferries resemble tiny bath toys from high up on Level 17.
At midday I order a Bloody Mary at the Garden Bar and a DJ plays a club remix of Don't Leave Me This Way.
Sunrise in Juneau is 5.18am. The forecast is for a high of 9.
"Haa Anni - Our Homeland". "Yak'ei haat yeey.aadi - It's good that you have come". Juneau is the home of the Tlingit (Klin-kit - "people of the tides") and is said to be the pinnacle of the Alaskan experience. That's a tough call in a theatre full of actors - Skagway, Glacier Bay, Ketchikan.
Some cold, hard facts: the wind factor in Juneau makes the airport one of the most dangerous in the world, says Peggy. Google "Juneau plane collides with fish". It happened on April 1 but it was no joke. The average temperature in January, the longest winter month, ranges from minus 4C to a high of 3C.
Day three, and we are boarding the Huna Raven water taxi for a two-hour blast to Icy Strait Point. The mountains, ancient leviathans, are reflected in the glassy water as we head out of the marina and Juneau recedes to a tiny settlement of dots before it disappears from sight altogether.
"Two o'clock!" shouts Dwayne Jack, the skipper, suddenly animated, stabbing the frigid air with a gnarly finger.
The universal code for sightseeing is measured by the hands of a clock. Sure enough, at starboard, the distinctive plume of spray followed by the glistening, visceral curve of a humpback as it rises, before diving back down, its tail fluke perfectly silhouetted against the brooding magnificence of the landscape, before vanishing in a single graceful, liquid moment. While the moment is fleeting, electric, the collective sense of euphoria lingers.
Day three and I'm running out of superlatives. We see dolphins, porpoises, sea lions, more humpbacks; uninhabited islands and outcrops with a single lonely dwelling.
Up there, 12 o'clock! Two bald eagles perch on a post at Hoonah Village, when we dock. They hang around till our curiosity becomes too much, before lifting off gracefully and heading for the distance.
Bald eagles are sacred to Native Alaskans. Their wingspan measures up to 2m and their nests weigh up to a ton. They number 30,000 in Alaska - once endangered, now doing ok.
At one o'clock. Straight up there. A large flock of sandhill cranes on their annual migration along the Pacific coast. They switch from a V-shaped squadron to create mesmerising formations, like delicate strands of jewels bound by an invisible thread against an impossibly blue sky.
Hoonah (the Native name is Shee Kaax) is a village on Chichagof Island, about 48km west of Juneau, in Icy Strait in the Inside Passage. Icy Strait Point is owned by 1450 Alaskan natives.
"Our people have four key values," says Hoonah Native Jonah Dybdahl: "The people, the land, the sky, the ocean." Jonah's people have lived in Alaska for, some say, 11,000 years. "Instead of reservations, we created corporations, so that the people are invested. So that the land and the interests around that are protected and owned by the Native people."
Hoonah has Alaska's only privately-owned cruise ship dock. In 2020, it won International Port of the Year, beating off St Petersburg in Russia and Dover in the UK. The Huna Totem Corporation is in partnership with Norwegian Cruise Lines and 229 ships are scheduled to visit during the 2022 season, from April to October. A second large cruise ship dock has been developed in the Wilderness Landing area. Innovations in infrastructure at Hoonah provide 230 jobs, and $US6.8 million a year to the local economy. Eighty per cent of the staff are local Alaska shareholders.
Hoonah has the world's largest ZipRider, 79 hectares of hiking trails, indigenous art and a really good locally brewed beer, Cannery Red. It also has Alaska's first high-speed gondola system, which leaves from Wilderness Landing (a vehicle-free area) and can move up to 22,400 people a day.
The gondola is impressive, but the view at the top - a vertical incline of nearly half a kilometre - is staggering; across the mountain ranges and Glacier Bay. Gondolas allow the control of tourists' movements, diminishing the erosion of the delicate ecosystem and shoreline. The impact is managed by making each itinerary identical and minimising the great hoofing footprint of human activity. Travel by gondola, whether up a mountain or traversing the forest floor to an excellent pub, is also a very comfortable way to get around. We end the afternoon at Duck Point Smokehouse, sitting around an outside fire eating meatballs and drinking beer.
Overnight we sail, and I fall into a deep heavy slumber thanks to a heady mix of bracing Icy Point Strait air and caipirinhas. At 8am, at Glacier Bay, the captain releases the bow and passengers spill out on to the deck. Sunlight cuts through layers of black, grey and white to make glistening shards of aquamarine. The air is still, the mood reverential. We are genuflecting at the altar of a vanishing cathedral. Where we now glide, slowly, amongst the million years-old landscape, it was once packed ice. The term “glacial pace” seems redundant now.
Glacier Bay National Park, in Alaska's Prince William Sound, has been receding since the 1700s, according to scientists. But it's happening more rapidly now due to global warming. When the ice breaks off into the ocean, it creates a visual and aural spectacle. So do the sea otters, dipping and sliding in the icy water. It is an other-worldly spectacle, to a soundtrack of constant crackling, crunching. A landscape shifting, grinding and changing.
Attitudes are changing, too, but to change the course of a great ship at full speed takes a gradual manoeuvre. The cruise industry walks the tightrope between the devil and the deep blue sea. Norwegian Cruise Lines represents 30 per cent of people who cruise to Alaska and its sustainability pledge means managing rubbish differently, recycling and reusing and no single-use plastics. At a press conference before we left Seattle, John Binkey, a Native Alaskan and head of President Ward Cove, talked of a committed collaboration with the indigenous people, including research into hydroelectric power for ships so they can plug in when they port. "As Alaskans", he says, "we are fiercely protective." The survival of the environment, and the industry itself, depends on that.
Whales - at 10 o’clock! The sun is setting, a golden orb casting a dazzling sheen over the sea and right on cue, a pod of humpbacks charges through the ocean. There must be 30 - maybe 50 - who knows - it’s a lot. It’s a giant spectacle against a giant backdrop. They are on their endless migratory journey; we are on the final leg of an epic journey home.
Later, at the District Brew House, the pianist is (of course), playing Billy Joel. I order a Hennessy, no ice, thanks - I love you just the way you are.
I, too, am an idealistic imposter, trying to measure the scale of a place according to my place in it. Losing myself in its beauty, trying to frame an immense landscape into tidy romantic cliches while clad in the comfort of a luxurious ship. How do you describe a wilderness where one moment is never the same, where the light changes constantly.
"How does one understand such a place, much less explain it," asks Alaskan writer Sherry Simpson in her book of essays, The Way Winter Comes. I went to Alaska knowing little and returned still unable to adequately describe it. To see Alaska by water is to witness its splendour; to embark on a seductive and inspiring adventure. The closest you might get to true meaning is from the Native people, the guardians who are in turn guarded by the mountains, and who are bound to the land they call sacred. Of anyone, it is they who would know. But we have seen only the very the tip of the iceberg. And the mystery remains.
To book a cruise with NCL, see ncl.com
Bliss, by the numbers
333m - Bliss, which started on the Alaska route in April this year, is this long. It was launched in 2018 and is designed for improved energy efficiency to meet Alaska's environmental regulations.
Zero - NCL is aiming for net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
20 - decks and 2220 cabins.
4650 - the ship can carry just over 4000 guests and crew for seven days. On our trip there were 1600 passengers.
60 - nationalities in the crew, the majority from the Philippines.
11 - medical staff, including doctors and nurses.
Food and drinks for a seven-day cruise, based on 3000 guests, and 1650 crew: 1800 dozen eggs 3175kg all-purpose flour (140 50lb bags) 2154kg long grain rice (95 50lb bags) 5443kg frozen poultry (all kinds) 10,8862kg frozen meat (pork, beef, veal and lamb) 4535 frozen seafood (fish and shellfish) 5909 litres fresh milk (regular and skim) 11,200 bottles of beer (international and domestic) 3900 bottles of wine (Champagne, red and white) 14,741kg fresh fruit 17,236kg fresh vegetables
This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald Travel here.