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Cruising Is The Best Holiday Ever!

Cruising will always be, at least for me, the best holiday around. Just think of it. You get a cabin comparable to any top hotel room, 24 hour room service, free food as many times a day as you can eat and the best facilities and entertainment options - all free. On top of this they're taking you somewhere, and on a luxury liner too! If you have kids you probably won't even see them for days on end! And all this usually for the price of a good hotel room, without food, for one night. And if you stay in the hotel, you ain't goin nowhere!

There is simply nothing like cruising. When the aeroplane in the seventies threatened the industry and I watched the ships slowly disappear I was sad. Witnessing a resurgence in cruising and a plethora of wonderful ships being launched has been exciting – more ships in the last five years than in decades before – I have been delighted to join the eager fraternity that sets sail on luxury liners regularly. There are few hotels in the world that offer the level of service found on most cruise liners - 5 star, yes. But imagine what you are paying per day - very often what an entire cruise will cost.

Why People Find Their Alaskan Cruise So Enticing.

by Michael Klerck

I am not at all amazed to see so many articles on cruising in Alaska.

We chose Alaska for our luxury liner holiday because we wanted to visit North America for the first time.  But also because it sounded so exotic – it would be, coming from South Africa.  

While it is disturbing to see no fewer than 4 gigantic liners in the small port of Ketchikan at one time, for instance, they do seem to time their arrival so that our shore excursion into a tropical forest (yes tropical) was as memorable as promised. 

As a destination it is nothing short of breathtaking. But it was also the ship itself – Holland America’s Volendam - that made it especially so. Imagine sitting in a leather chair nine storeys up in an observation lounge with 270 degree views. Imagine this in almost utter silence, while the ship glides through a narrow passage, with less than 100 metres on either side – we could hear the waterfalls, see the wildlife, and watch in amazement as whales and seals swam passed us. When she approached a ‘corner’ my naval instincts and ocean experience that goes back 30 years said no. How was she going to negotiate what was literally a corner up ahead? Keep in mind this was the largest ship I had ever embarked – over 70 000 tonnes. I ran below decks to call my wife, and we both watched in amazement as her engine pods (much like movable outboard motors) and bow thrusters allowed her to sail through effortlessly. I simply shook my head.

When we finally reached the glacier it was an experience that was quite simply humbling ( see pics below ).  All the statistics about the melting ice and the glacier itself retreating many metres each year were disturbing, but then again it was as a result of this that we could approach and enter what was now a ‘modern’ bay – not accessible 20 years ago. In fact because of the sophisticated engines and designs, few ships, even with much less tonnage, have been able to negotiate the narrow passages and actually turn around when they get there.

I delighted in videoing how the captain, by using a pencil sized joystick, was able to program the ship so that she turned so silently and slowly over a period of an hour, without any movement forwards or backwards. I wondered if my small frigate, of just 2500 tonnes, from the South African Navy in 1973 might have done this – I think not. Passengers on the bow, and those sitting astern were then afforded a view of the entire bay and the cathedral-like walls of the glacier itself as the ship turned slowly in the streaming sunshine of the Alaskan summer. The glacier itself was somewhat daunting – with pieces of ice ready to calve – we desperately hoped a large one would break off and crash with thunderous applause into the mottled green bay, but alas only slivers did so on that particular day. We were acutely aware that our very presence added to the environmental changes, but were somehow willing to compromise in order to live the moment – so much like most of us on our endangered planet.

In fact the entire luxury liner holiday programme itself must be, for many people not excluding the planners and ships owners, somewhat of a dilemma – hundreds of summer cruises a year do take their toll – the air pollution itself is a factor. But owners and cruise operators do everything they can to minimize the effect – cigarette butts are a serious no-no, for example; don’t even think of throwing one overboard, and I have do doubt that with technology, our gargantuan liner was probably less guilty of environmental impact than my teeny frigate all those years ago.

Skagway gives one a chance to take a memorable train ride up over the start of the Rockies and into Canada – one follows the path up the mountain on which hundreds of pack animals fell to their death as a result of their owner’s greed for gold. We were simply delighted at the Humpback Whale food festival out in the bay at Juneau – Alaska’s capital (the only one in the world that is not accessible by road). This ‘shore excursion’ of about three hours was well worth it – our small boat captain guaranteed, with typical American marketing gusto, that we would see them feed. And we did. What a feast! The glaciers retreated with the last ice age and carved a vertical passage down into the bay, meaning that the shoreline has a vertical drop of hundreds of metres into the sea. It was here that a family of Humpbacks secured their lunch with their sophisticated methods of diving and bubble netting their small prey.

Believe it or not, we experienced some disappointment with regard to wildlife. One can see more whales, and really up close, in October to January in Cape Town and surrounds than we did in Alaska. We were constantly reminded that on the multitude of islands we passed on the inside passage (essential method of cruising) that for each square kilometre there was one bear. Sadly, or luckily we encountered and saw not one. I turned to my wife one day and knew what she was thinking. For all the wilderness angle pursued by brochures and guides, we realised how privileged we were to live in a country with the greatest concentration of life on the planet: Africa. Alaska seem almost desert-like, but from this aspect only.

We did visit a salmon farm and see beautiful eagles. The whale feeding-frenzy  (not something we get back home - they entertain us back there with circus tricks in the water) is now edited and copied to a much viewed DVD back home, and we realised that Alaska was not necessarily (for us, that was) a memorable wildlife experience.

But boy, it sure put on another display. One cannot visit without feeling one has been transported to a world of sublime and inexorably, stark, and primordial beauty. It is here, as with other ‘last frontiers’ that the world of yester era can be experienced. The beauty is both harsh and delicate, a place where ancient forces: enemies and allies met and struggled. I shall not easily forget the sun dispersing dark and ominous clouds, just in time for us to bask in its rays and then literally gasp at the spectacularly beautiful colours that the sunshine itself was able to entice from the seemingly cold and austere glacier.

She, the sun, seemed to thrust herself down onto the orchestra of icy protrusions and phallic structures, like an excited conductor might charge at his musicians with his baton, evoking their hidden talents.

We found our very spirits dancing with every ray that fell and in some weird neurological space my brain did summersaults. I remembered the testimony of a LSD-taking friend years back, and his description of how he ‘heard’ a sunset and could see colours in sounds. Here Nature was the intoxicating influence, and I swore blind that night that I had smelt the very colours that danced on the back of the retreating glacier, and heard every moan of the pristine and exquisitely beautiful blue that shimmered in every crevice and corner of the dazzling bay!

It is sheer wonder that many of these luxury liner holidays are so inexpensive (I hate to use the word cheap). On the cusp of summer – April/August, September one can find them for as little as $499 – an entire week of sublime luxury and relaxation.

Amazingly, with at least four meals a day, and at least one gourmet tray of delights at 2am, my wife and I actually lost weight! The food was nothing short of spectacular and while my wife faithfully journeyed through the entire menu each night, my waiter soon appeased my strange penchant for dining by serving no fewer than three small main courses from around the world. I would certainly not have been able to afford such delights in Paris of Vienna, some not even back home.

Choose your luxury liner holiday carefully; while Holland America’s passenger list averaged around 45 in age, a small family of kids had the children’s program and a full-time child minder to themselves – a distinct advantage. But if it’s love, sex and rock ‘n roll you’re after you might like to take a peek at Carnival or a cruise line that majors in another kind of wildness. Personally I would prefer this type of party cruise in the Med, Caribbean or Mexico. Somehow the breathtaking setting of Alaska itself demands a quiet and humble respect, more in tune with sipping whiskies, and silently walking on the upper deck in the clean, ancient air.

Whatever your choice, go you must. You will not be the same again.

Michael Klerck is a freelance writer and won the coveted Mondi Paper Magazine Writer's Award for work in Men's Health. You can view his much visited personal site about his childhood on Robben Island.

email me at vonpeter@absamail.co.za

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We often sat right up in the observation lounge - about nine storeys high, and enjoyed 300 degree views. We could see animal life on the edge and up the mountains, with water cascading ceremoniously down into the strangely coloured green of the water which is as a result from the glacier grinding slowly against the rock itself, thereby crushing it into a fine powder. The glacier retreats every year, hence our ability to enter the bay and sail right up to it. The irony did not escape us.

Sailing into Glacier Bay on our luxury liner, through this narrow passage, was near impossible for just about any ship less than 10 years ago, but with the advent of sophisticated bow-thrusters, the captain literally toggles a pencil sized joystick and the ship responds instantly. We literally turned on a coin.

I shall not easily forget this scene; haunting at its best, ominous at its worst. Ironically each ship that visits adds to the pollution, although even a cigarette butt over the edge can summon security and invite serious consequences.

This was summer, but on deck with the glacier right up ahead, a good coat was an excellent idea. The air is so pristine, the sky so clear when the clouds part, it was a slice of paradise, or simply life on Earth just a few hundred years ago.

Ketchican - I just loved this port. Many shore excursions are possible at all of them, but the little town itself was delightful, and I found a pub on the quayside with 27 active draught beer pumps!

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If ever you do cruise to Cape Town, be sure to visit Robben Island. Here is a link to my site which details how I grew up on the island!

It has been one of the most successful personal sites for over ten years; I have had many emails from others who grew up there also, with their own memories of the island.

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FIND SOMETHING 100 TIMES BETTER THAN TIMESHARE