We arrive at our first port of call today. Forecast for the day is rain with a high of 50^o F. We arrived at 1PM and scheduled to leave around 10:15 PM. We had a shore excursion scheduled for 4 PM. There was plenty of time to kill, so we relaxed near the pool and had a couple of drinks. We had a leisurely lunch and headed back to our stateroom to bundle up against the cold and rain during our much anticipated shore excursion. I say much anticipated because I was quite excited about Alaska, didn't know what to expect, but expected a lot.

Well, around 2 PM, when we get back to the stateroom, we discover an envelope containing a notice that our excursion was rescheduled to 1:30 PM. What a shock! The tour had already started without us. I was furious and went down to the Front Desk (open 24 hours). I was calm, though, when I interacted with the nice young lady at the counter. She explained that she couldn't do much now and that this was the responsibility of the Shore Excursions department (and they were closed at this time). She did, however, offer to take our tickets and forward them to the excursions department. She was confident they would get back to me with a solution. I said I wanted a full refund and she offered forward my demand to them.

In any case, we decided to not let this spoil our day. We got off on to the pier. There were a number of kiosks belonging to local operators who were offering tours of the town and the Mendenhall glacier. We signed up with one of the local operators for a trip to the glacier.

Approaching Juneau

Shopping in Juneau

Mendenhall Glacier

 
This decision turned out to be one of the best decisions of the day! The guide was a Tlingit Indian who was funny and informative. His narrative kept us spell bound for the entire duration of the trip. Turns out his father (who was also the chief ) narrated stories to him about the tribe and also taught him the Tlingit language. He claimed to speak it fluently. He also learnt about his tribe's history. Interesting facts about the Tlingit. There are two major clans: the Eagles and the Ravens. Eagles can only marry Ravens or vice versa. But marriage within Eagles and Ravens is prohibited. The purpose was prevent inbreeding. Also, sons were raised by uncles and daughters were raised by aunts. The reason was that if they were raised by their biological parents the parents might be lenient! Finally, the successor to the chief is not the chief's son, but one of the boys raised by the uncles. There were a number of other anecdotes about the day-to-day life of the Tlingit—too numerous to recount.

We spent about an hour at the glacier. We had never been near a glacier before. Whatever, I knew was from the movies where people walked on glaciers and fell into crevasses to be dramatically rescued against all odds by a heroic figure (while the characters who dropped into the crevasse survived by eating moss and snails—or something like that). We didn't actually walked on the glacier, but were close enough.

Although it wasn't raining, it was cloudy. Ben, the driver (whose last name was Dover—a fake one he said later), told us that a cloudy and/or rainy day was the best condition to view the glacier. What is distinct about the glacier is the blue tinge to the ice. We were told that this was because the blue color of the spectrum is reflected and all other colors were absorbed by the ice.

Mendenhall Glacier

We got back to the ship quite happy the way things turned out.

Dinner was interesting. We shared a table with another couple who were from California. We were surprised at the number of people from California. I wondered by Californians would ever want to go to a cold place like Alaska! The gentleman had an interesting background. He was retired, 15 years. He was teacher before retirement. Before teaching he working in the private sector for a while. He got into teaching for altruistic reasons. We got into a long discussion about education, teaching, unions and a whole bunch of issues. We also got to know he had a bad back. It seemed like lot of people on board had one infirmity or another. Bad back was a common one. But the really interesting part was when food arrived. He had ordered 3 servings of the main entree! He also ate two and half of those servings. If memory serves me right, he also had dessert! Wow!

We concluded the day with a showing by the Filipino crew on their culture. What was noteworthy was that they were not professional performers. Very impressive. Sandhya and I know that that it takes a lot of effort and practice to put out such a thing. In fact, we know by experience that a 2 minute performance takes around 40 hours of choreography and effort. The crew put on a 1 hour show. Bravo.

The fascinating couple we met on the Juneau stop

The Theater where the Filipino crew put on a show