Our next stop on the tour was Juneau and in my mind that was going to be a pretty and interesting place. However when we got there we realized that there is that the town itself is not very pretty and is quite scattered around an inlet with some sort of urban concentration neat the cruise terminal which does adhere to all the prejudices of a cruise town. Diamond after Diamond shop, way too many overprized excursions on offer and the whole place did not oozed less hospitality and more - how can we get more money out of you for the few hours you are here - type atmosphere. At first we had thought to not do anything much and just hang around town instead of doing glacier flights or wildlife safari's by plane etc, but once in town we decided hanging out there too long would be depressing so we negotiated some last minute tickets for a whale watching tour in Auke Bay.
That proved a good choice as immediately we where back into all that makes Alaska beautiful!. I already now that when I retire I want to become a lighthouse keeper, the only question is still where and Alaska had some very competitive locations on offer.
The whales also showed on cue and hence the day was a success already.
A you can see we found quite a few together. Unlike in Hawai'i the whales in Alaska are not occupied with new babies and mating so there is in general a little less show then over there. Beyond the whales we where kind of hoping for bear to show up on the coast line to complete our national geographic type pictures -;)
Ms Kaatje was happy being in a boat again, and said 'wow' a lot because everybody else did.
And Rick & water & whales is of course always a good combination!
We had not run out of luck on this holiday yet and the weather was try and clear and we stumbled upon a big group of whales who where busy bubblenet feeding. This is an unusual group feeding behavior by which a group of whales by generating bubbles and herding a school of fish upwards direct the whole school of usually herring upwards and then all burst upwards through the surface mouth open to consume as many as possible. No pictures of the underwater works but at the surface it was impressive enough!
With 5 plumes or blows here plus another 3 whales visible in this picture you can tell it was not a small group. We could hear there labored breathing from the work out of their feeding exercise. 8 Whales together is almost noisy!
But also to all good things comes and end so it was time to say bye bye to the whales
and bye bye to Juneau. The not so pretty town in a very pretty place.
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