Mike Davis

Wednesday morning we’re up early to watch the ship gliding in to dock at Juneau. Breakfast at the Garden Café is very popular this morning. There simply isn’t room for everyone in here for this particular ‘rush-hour’, so many people overspill out to The Great Outdoor Café. We have a whale-watching tour booked for 7.30am.

On the dock we soon find our tour bus whose driver is a native Tlingit by the name of Katherine. She drives us through light rain on the 12 mile trip out to Auke Bay (pronounce it, ‘Aaach’). There we are met by Joe – a wildlife expert – who takes us along to our jetboat, ‘Big Blue’, piloted by Captain Greg. Joe is a bright young fellow, and a relaxed and fluent guide, who reassures the nervous among us by telling us they are fully licensed and carry all the necessary safety equipment on board. Captain Greg - a tough-looking salt, who sports a gunfighter moustache, and whose permanent ‘five-o-clock shadow’, sprouting like a million iron-filings on an already grizzled face, and which is plainly impervious to the best efforts of the Gillette company’s products - eases Big Blue out over the bar at low speed before opening her up for a somewhat bumpy but exhilarating dash out into the bay.

It’s just a matter of minutes before we spot our first humpback whale about a thousand yards distant, – and what a huge thrill it is to witness this gentle leviathan in it’s summer feeding grounds. There’s a rush to get out on the small rear deck to get some pictures. We are happy ‘snappers’ because there are at least two – possibly three – whales feeding here and we have a number of good sightings – ‘blows’, ‘humps’ and ‘flukes’, but no leaps. After some 20 minutes, The skipper tells us he’s going to head out to the Saginaw Channel. He says there’s a buoy out there on to which sea-lions like to haul themselves. We’re there in a few minutes and, sure enough, there are three or four of these huge creatures noisily disputing the prime spots. It’s a great sight to witness. But, best of all, atop the buoy sits a fine bald eagle, seemingly indifferent to the approach of our boat. Needless to say, he’s the most photographed bald eagle we see that day.

We skirt around Hump Island and Shelter Island. Joe tells us one of these islands has a bear population of some 1500. We politely decline his invitation to stop off for a picnic. We watch two more humpback’s before heading back to Auke Bay on a more easterly course due to rough conditions. It’s still very much a switch-back ride though, with the boat smacking loudly into each wave– very noisy, but huge fun.

On our return bus trip, Katherine entertains us by telling us something of the Tlingit culture. She tells us about the Eagle and the Raven moieties, (she was a ‘Raven’) and how, when her grandmother died, she was told gently – in the tradition of her people - “Grandma’s gone for a ‘walk in the woods’.”

She teaches us the Tlingit word for ‘thank you’ – and here, I’m uncertain of the actual spelling, but it’s pronounced - ‘Aah-nach-sheesh’ (with a heavy emphasis on the ‘nach’). Her birthplace was Hoonah, and she drives the tour bus only as a summer job. Her main occupation is as a teacher on the ‘Head Start’ programme in Haines. She tells us her mother knew only Tlingit until school when she was compelled to learn and speak English – forbidden thereafter to speak her native tongue. She has the most wonderful head of hair, but then beautiful hair seems to be a common feature of these native Americans. We leave the bus saying, ‘Aah-nach-sheesh’ to Katherine. What a nice lady.

We take a look at the town of Juneau and are distinctly underwhelmed. The majority of main street shops offer a mix of jewellery and tacky souvenirs, and although the surrounding scenery is unremittingly stunning, there’s been precious little of aesthetic value added hereabouts by human endeavour. In an art shop, we buy a small picture by the celebrated Alaskan artist, Rie Munoz, (now in her eighties, and still painting pictures full of sweet liveliness and guileless charm) whose work I discovered on the internet a couple of years ago.

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