Tedious
Maybe it was because I’d spent the last five days cruising around Alaska, but the last thing I wanted to do with my precious few hours in Ketchikan was spend most of it stuck in another boat going through the exact same scenery. The ship was nice and comfortable and the crew were lovely, but a round trip of five hours to spend 15 minutes in a fjord that was a poor mans version of Milford Sound was truly excessive.
It would be unkind to blame the staff for the brilliant sunny weather – the onboard naturalist was really a duck out of water wearing her rain boots in 28 degree heat – and the subsequent underwhelming nature of the promised waterfalls. Similarly the “misty fjords” was quite the misnomer.
The shore excursion people made it very clear that there was no guarantee we’d see any wildlife. If it wasn’t for the five minute glimpse of a black bear near the start of the trip I would have been ropeable. On the other hand, the loud argument my traveling companion had with the autistic Irish boy next to her about the difference between a black bear and a brown bear did add a little frisson of excitement to the day (we had been told in Juneau that the difference was that a black bear would climb up a tree to eat you, whereas a brown bear would push down the tree first and then eat you). Honestly I think most of their argument was because she couldn’t understand anything he was saying due to his accent.
On the positive side, they did provide us all with binoculars, so that we could be absolutely sure the national park was completely pristine and free of any wildlife. Also, we did buy some authentic Tlingit jewelry on board (made in Mexico), and we were able to buy for an exorbitant fee the same lovely beer that we had on our tour yesterday. It was also nice that I wasn’t seasick.
When we finally got back to shore, all the shops were closed so we were saved the expense of buying anything else we might have wanted. In the 20 minutes we had to explore the town before we had to get back on board our cruise ship, we did manage to see a jellyfish from the dock. Three stars because the heads were clean.