Day 29 May17th Sitka

         

St Michael's Cathedral

It was forecast that today would be

Lutheran Church interior

fine and warm and so when we looked out of the cabin in the morning it was dry and sunny but felt cold. We hoped it would get warmer as the day progressed! We breakfasted and saw that we had already docked in Sitka and people were using the shuttle to get to the town which was the Russian capital of Alaska.

By 1000 we left as well because we wanted to see the town before

sea lion

taking our pre-arranged wildlife boat trip at 1215. We found the Russian Orthodox cathedral and a

part of totem pole

Lutheran church which was much simpler in style. We looked at shops and totem pole square before deciding we needed a coffee and soon found a small hotel which served coffee and cake. The town was basically busier than Homer or Kodiak and seemed an important centre for

sea lion resting on buoy

this southern area of Alaska.

We had booked the boat trip hopefully to see some sea otters (which we had not seen so far) and any other wildlife in the area.

male sea otter

We set off in a similar styled boat to previous and soon saw bald eagles and sea lions (again a first for this trip), we carried on and began to see sea otters in small numbers. We initially saw a male – they swim on their backs and keep their paws out of the

mum sea otter with baby swimming

water because they do not have the

female sea otter with baby

usually very thick fur on their paws. Sea lions, seals etc have blubber to keep them warm. Then we found a group of females (they do not hang around with males), some of whom had pups riding on their stomachs. A bit further on their was a mum with a small

it was sunny somewhere!

pup who she was teaching to swim and we could hear her talking to it all the time.

blue sky in the distance

We carried on and for a time we saw nothing else new as were looking for whales and bears on the shorelines of islands. Eventually we came across a brown bear on the shore but he was not there too long. We went ahead and a few minutes later saw some

brown bear

porpoises and nearby to that a humpback whale appeared. He dived and we waited around for it to resurface and eventually we saw the blowing and

our route

humpback again. Unfortunately we were not able to photograph the whale or porpoises. Time was passing and we had to return to the Zaandam as it was all-aboard at 1530. It was a good trip – we had seen some of the animals before but this was the first time in Alaska for porpoises, sea lions and groups of sea otters.

The weather was colder than predicted and so by the time we arrived back at the ship we were ready for a nice, hot cup of tea. Since then we have been through our photos, selected some for the blog and have now been for this evening’s dinner.  So ended our final day in Alaska for our cruise.