Voyage to the Arctic; Day 2, The Big Boat.

(Previous episode here) 

Waking to a clear morning, the view was sharp. 

Clear enough to see that our ship had arrived. 

Our heads, on the other hand, were less than clear. The time difference was currently nine hours behind, increasing by another hour in the next day or two (who knows?) as we enter Alaskan waters.

Time to leave. 

The photos that I remember admiring in the 1965 edition of 'Beautiful British Columbia' looked nothing like this.

And so to our boat. A Big Boat. So big that the word 'big' is hardly big enough. It is paradoxically too big to see, as you can only see a part of it. 

This is all that was within our range of vision upon boarding.

But from a distance:

(This photo was taken later in the week whilst on another boat.)

Boarding gave us a preview of the week to come. People everywhere, crazy long queues, organised disorder. The first queue (after the traffic snarl up from Adam's flat to the harbour) was USA Immigration. The ship we were getting onto was to go to Alaska, which belongs to the United States (sold to them for loose change by Russia). This process involved all 4,000 of us queueing obediently, in fear of deportation. Thankfully, after the removal of only a couple of fingernails, they learned all the necessary information about our love and admiration of King Trump, and allowed us through.

We were a speck amongst over 4,000 other specks. An earlier 4,000 had already disembarked that morning. And yet, despite the ship's enormity, on board it was strangely small. The corridors are claustrophobically narrow. The bedrooms no bigger than an average to small bedroom at home, the washroom matching that of our camper van. 

This was to be a very strange week.

We left harbour majestically, sipping our champagne. What do you mean that champagne is not included in our 15 drinks a day?!? There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. Everyone is out to make a fast buck here...

We were there to celebrate the marriage of my cousin Adam (technically my first-cousin once-removed), to Sonia, soon to be my first-cousin once-removed-in-law. (?) 

This is she...

As the sun went down on this exhausting day, we got to know over fifty new friends and family, most of whom can be seen towards the end of the short video below this photo of the sun going down on me...:

Next episode here...