We tendered at Juneau today. I’d been there the last time, but I remember it being cloudy and rainy, a long line to get off the ship, and the dock was full of souvenir stores and jewelry stores trying to sell stuff to tourists. I think I spent 20 minutes on shore that time.
This time there was no line to get off. We had a whale-watching sea kayaking excursion booked, which met at 9:45 on the dock, so we took our time to get ready in our Antarctic gear. We weren’t sure how long the tendering would take or how long we would wait, so we went early since I saw a Princess cruise ship coming to port and knew that while it is docking, we can’t run tenders. So we got to shore half an hour early, which gave us time to walk around the dock and downtown area. Not much had changed in that part.
We got together with our group at 9:35, and found that our group was only 4 people; the other couple was from Colorado, who already knew the guide, and one of them was herself a kayak guide. I knew we would be slowing them down.
We drove back up north to Auke bay, and launched on a small boat towards the Channel Islands. We lingered a long time between Lincoln island and Shelter island because there is a channel between them where a lot of whales were feeding. There were easily 7 or more whales. None of them surfaced as close to us as those in Point Adolphus, but it was pretty cool. The other couple were especially impressed.
Then the boat went to a beach on Lincoln Island (I think??) and we got off the boat and launched the tandem kayaks. The kayaking was fun - these kayaks have rudders, which made turning much easier, and gave me (sitting at the back) a lot of control. It took a while to figure out the control though. We didn’t get closer to the whales while on kayak than when we were on the ship - kayaks are covered by the same rules about staying away from marine life as motorized boats. But we got some stellar sea lions coming over to check us out. The guide looked worried, she got us to raft up (park side by side and hold on), while the sea lions - 3 males, looking giant - poke their heads out staring at us for a few minutes, and our guide paddling slowly to get the raft away from them, all the while explaining that there is no incident of sea lions attacking humans. We then paddled to various spots to watch for whales. It was difficult since the best spots are usually surrounded by other boats, and we’d have to fight their wake to get close to it. So we saw a lot of whales surfacing near other boats. We did see a lot of salmon jumping out of the water, which was amusing, and we saw several bald eagles flying overhead to get to their trees after hunting.
We ended with a 40 mins paddle to a different beach, where the boat met us and took us back to the dock while we ate a boxed lunch. I think we spent about 2.5 hours on the kayak, 45 hour minutes on the boat each way, about 20 mins on the dock for changing, and another 30 minutes each driving to/from town, so the whole excursion was 6 hours long.
The tour company provided everything for us: boots, rain-proof pants and jumpers (that were better than the ones we wore), so we didn’t really need to wear the Antarctica gear. But, as soon as we were done kayaking, it started to rain. So when we changed out of the paddle company’s gear, we still had rain protection. When we got back to town we were both tired, so immediately went back to our room to change, and headed to afternoon tea. I showered, read and rested - I needed the rest - until dinner at the Italian restaurant. We only met up with LPCR’s family then, so we had a lot to talk about our excursions (they went to dog mushing camp).
It was a long 2-hour dinner, we were done at 9:40pm. And by then we were all so tired that we went straight to bed.
The curious (and slightly intimidating) Stellar Sea lions: https://i.imgur.com/RRbtJwE.mp4
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