Monday 18th May

Today was an ‘at sea’ day so not much going on. After a ‘healthy’ breakfast we went to the Stardust Lounge to hear a talk on Alaskan history.

Got connected to the internet today - bloody expensive! Have signed up for 250 minutes for $CAD100 - so that amount of time is going to have to last for the week. No wifi in our stateroom though so we have to take this netbook to the Internet Café to use it there.

Being ‘at sea’ meant just that - mostly sea to the horizon in all directions during the morning and in the afternoon we passed between fir tree covered islands on both sides with waterfalls gushing down into the sea and high snow covered mountains in the distance.

View from stateroom window

While having afternoon tea we saw a pod of orca whales quite close to the ship. We were lucky enough to bag a window table for dinner and again sat there for ages as we sailed slowly past the many pretty islands. At that time we noticed a small red boat coming up close to the ship - getting so close that we thought those on board were on a suicide mission. But when it got alongside we noticed it was the Canadian ‘Coast Guard’ and we realised that it was something to do with us getting close to the US Border. It has been cloudy for most of the day, but the sun broke through during the evening and the day ended with the most amazing sunset.

Clocks, for us, go back one hour tonight which is a good thing as we have a very early start tomorrow morning for our Ketchikan excursion.