Sitka was the Russian capital of Alaska, a fur trading post, site of many battles between the Tlinkit and the Russians, and, with a population of close to 9 thousand, the 4th largest city in the state. It is also a city without a docking pier for cruise ships. This means we needed to get in one of the ship's tenders in order
to go ashore.
We woke up to find Jean-Claude moored at Sitka and the P.A system announcing the process to go ashore. Apparently it involved entering the right side of the theater if you had no shore excursion or the left side if you had a shore excursion. So we went to have breakfast instead. I had french toast and pineapple juice and was very happy.
By the time we finished breakfast and were ready to go ashore things have sorted themselves out and the instructions became, "go to deck A and get in one of the tenders." Much simpler, and resulted in us being at downtown Sitka by 11 AM.
We had a "nature and history" walking tour scheduled for later in the day, but with a few hours to kill we decided to visit the main church in town, St. Michael's Cathedral. It was a wooden structure housing an Orthodox church (remember, it was a Russian colony) with several Byzantine icons inside. It was by no means big, but had a colorful history, with many of the carvings having been created by the original bishop of that church, as well as a few miracles of its own: icons dropped from the ship showing up ashore, and men carrying unbelievable weights saving candelabra from a fire that gutted the church in 1966.
Learned the nature of the Orthodox cross during this visit. Apparently they believe that the cross with three horizontal lines is a more faithful representation than the Catholic version with only one horizontal line. The two extra lines are supposed to represent the INRI inscription over Christ's head and the part where his feet rested.
This was followed by a visit to the local souvenir shops, where we acquired most of what our friends will be getting: small totem poles, charm bracelets with Alaska pendants, smoked salmon and baseball caps. Four ourselves we bought what we always do, a picture book of the regions we are visiting.
After a stop for food and espresso we joined our waking tour which, curiously enough, started by getting us all inside a bus. We were taken to the Raptor Flight Training Center", part of Alaska's raptor rescue effort where they help all kinds of birds (including, apparently, a humming bird once). We got to tour their facilities and visit a few of their unreleasables, eagles, falcons and owls that are unable to fly due to their injuries. It was an instructive visit, though it seems that way too many birds run into power lines over there.
After the visit to the center the nature part of our tour started, with a walk through the Sitka part of the Tongass National Forest. A beautiful walk leading us to the shoreline, during which we got introduced to Alaska's national tree, the Sitka Spruce, as well as other plants such as the hemlock, huckleberries and others. We also ran into several totem poles which had the interesting property that everyone knew where they came from, but no one knew what the carvings meant.
Eventually we made our way back to civilization and to the history part of the tour, which consisted mostly of showing us the house where the carving bishop lived and pointing out the residences of several friends of our guide, including how much the house was bought or sold for. Beach-front property in that town of 9 thousand apparently goes around for 600 thousand dollars.
And that was it for Sitka. We headed back for our ship and an hour later were sailing to our next destination, Ketchikan, the Salmon Capital of the World.
Wildlife sighted: 2 owls, 4 falcons, 1 golden eagle, 5 bald eagles.
Pictures can be found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment