"Alaska -a long way from South Africa " a Alaska Travel Page by junecorlett

Travelling to Alaska from South Africa is a very long and tiresome journey. Our journey begins by travelling to Frankfurt in Germany which is an 11 hour flight. We spent 5 hrs in the noisiest airport in the world (Frankfurt)before embarking on the rest of our journey to Vancouver in Canada. 10 hours flying time to Vancouver from Germany.
My husband has always wanted to see the Glaciers in Alaska. We decided to do the trip on a cruise (Holland America Cruises).
Coming from one of the sunniest countries we had to don our warmest gear, with thermal underwear at the ready for our cruise.
Vancouver really is a beautiful clean city. We spent the night in a hotel at the Pier in Vancouver where OUR ship would be docking the next morning.
We were in bed and asleep by 5pm as we were exhausted.
In the morning on awakening, Roger opened the curtains and THERE.....WOW, our ship was waiting. Less than 100 metres from our window.
I could not wait to experience our first cruise.

Alaska is a beautiful country. The villages the ship docked in are sleepy, and very safe. I call them villages, even though a big passenger liner can dock here.
The towns people seem a bit like hill-billies to me. They are mainly fisherman, or shopkeepers in the towns, which cater mainly to the cruise-ship tourists. Our trip was towards the end of the summer season(September). In fact I think we were the last ship to dock for the summer. We could already see the shops removing their facades, to pack away until the next summer. I was amazed that all these shops close for 7 months of the year. I wondered where the "Folk" move off to for jobs. On questioning the locals I was told that they move "Back Home", be it Seattle in the USA or Boston .

Pictures will be appearing soon.

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It is recommended that you do not spend more than Half an hour on the glacier. We were warmly dressed, thermal socks, thermal gear, boots with non-slip chains wrapped around them (Provided by the tour operator) and leather gloves. After about 15 minutes I felt frozen.

Pictures will be appearing soon

I will not recommend the Alaska cruise for people younger than 30. The ship can carry up to 1000 passengers and 450 crew. I must have seen less than 50 young people.
I will tell you more about the ship later...things to do

Pictures will posted soon.