Cameron Michael Anywhere: Alaska: Seward

Yes, it does look delicious.

Seward contrasts Homer nicely. Where the bulk of Homer sprawls lazily on low lands in an open bay, Seward sits confined by the steep walls of a fjord and its water. Both are comfortable enough, but Seward leaves you feeling ever so slightly claustrophobic. Katy - my couchsurfing host - echoes these feelings at some point during two nights of enthusiastic brewery sampling and ceaseless conversation. It's fantastic. Seward, like much of this part of the world, was largely rebuilt after being ravaged by tsunamis, tremors and soil liquefaction from the earthquake in 1964 but it retains a frontier and simple feel.

Quite accidentally four days pass. A day evaporated just recovering from Homer. Exit Glacier is a short drive and an easy walk away.

Exit Glacier, casually retreating its finger back up the valley it came down from.

The pick of these four days though was spent on a boat, cruising through the Kenai Fjords National Park. The blurb bills it as a day trip with the opportunity to see otters, bald eagles, sea lions, puffins, porpoises, whales, orcas, glaciers and fjords. They had me at otters.

So naturally, I was already pretty happy ten minutes into the trip when we came across a couple of sea otters just lazing about on their backs in the harbour. That we would then see everything else as billed over the course of seven hours was simply fantastic. A colony of puffins provided ample entertainment as they flew/crashed into the surf beneath their nests. What they lack in grace through the air they apparently make up for getting through the water like a guided missile. The sea lions smell terrible and bark aggressively, presumably at the smell. Dall porpoises - they "wear" a similar get up to orcas - race our bow for ten or so minutes, breaching to the delight of the masses up front. Reputedly the second fastest mammal in the sea, they tire of us and race off somewhere else. Not long after that we encounter a humpback whale and her calf. For the most part they don't get up to much... but then suddenly this:

Oh hi!

... and bye now.

However as with many of these sorts of things, it's hard not to feel that broadly speaking the attraction is simply the animals. We race from spot to spot, following radio reports of particular animals in different locations. Save for time spent at a glacier in one of the fjords, appreciating the landscape - thoroughly impressive in and of itself - is mostly incidental. It seems to be the general attitude of the people on these boats or buses that seeing all the animals is a requisite for a good day and that everything else be damned. I guess operators pander to that.

It's a shame.