No more Jewellery stores... Please!!

Tree marked by a bear indicating its territory
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Today the boat was not docking in the port of Ketchikan until after lunch. We took the opportunity to sleep in and have a lazy buffet breakfast on the Lido deck. We were told that this town was the wettest in North America - with 300 days of rain a year. The prediction was for 80 percent chance of rain and were told to take wet weather clothes. On arrival in the port though, the skies opened up to blue skies and a warm day.

Our main activity in this port was a flight on a float plane to Neets bay, where we would walk to the Salmon hatchery and wait in anticipation for the wild black bears to show themselves. The 25min plane flight over was very smooth, providing us with magnificent vistas of the area and ended with a smooth water landing. Our guide - the "Bear Whisperer", led our small group along the short walk to the hatchery, ensuring that we kept quiet and remained in a small group. This was bear territory, and if a bear "popped" out of the nearby brush, we were not to scream or run, as this means food to a bear. Luckily we had no visitors on the way! We stopped at one point to look at a tree that had been marked by a bear signalling this was his territory. We waited at the viewing platforms with baited breath, hoping that we would see some bears. Sightings were not guaranteed, as these are wild animals and they move on their own clock. The guide left us and went around a corner and came back and motioned to us to follow her and be very quiet, that there was a young adult bear nearby in the scrub. We followed her and had our first black bear sighting!! It sent shivers down my spine - the size of this animal was what I would consider large, but was only an 18month old cub! He quickly moved out of sight and we were ushered back to the viewing platform. Here we waited for other bears to show themselves, but then our young male bear came back around the bend, up through the creek, and decided to try some salmon fishing. Here he seem to be wading around in the rock pools, but then, in a quick motion, he had a large male salmon in his mouth. He took this to a nearby boulder and proceeded to enjoy his catch.  One salmon however is never enough for a growing bear, so after his first course, he went off on the hunt for another feed. The seagulls dived on his remains with ferver. His second catch came much more quickly, but the smell of his first fish attracted another bear who came to investigate. As this other yound male bear approached, the guide said the other male arched his back and prickled his hair, but decided that this other bear could have his first course left-overs. The other bear snatched the salmon carcass and ran away into the bush. Those poor seagulls miss out again!

Bears, not Brrrrrs

First bear spotted
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The flight back to Ketchikan was once again luckily uneventful but full of fantastic views. We spotted some mountain goats perched high up in the snow covered mountains, and wondered just how they could get to their resting place. Bask in port, we took a brief walk around Ketchikan, looking for a coffee and afternoon tea, but found nothing but the usual shops. I was starving so we went back to the ship and straight up to the Lido deck for a casual dinner. We decided to watch the nightly show in the Show Lounge, called H20, which was a medley of songs about water, rain, snow, rivers etc. This was most entertaining.

Bear in front of a spillway waterfall
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Back in our room we Watched the "In the Wild" movie about a young man living in the wilds of Alaska, who got trapped during the spring by the rising rivers due to the snow melt, and ate wrong berries which eventually poisened him to death. This passed the time till the much anticipated Dedication to Chocolate Dessert Buffet presented on the Lido Sun Deck. I think nearly everyone on board had stayed up for this feature, where everyone piled their plates high with any and every type of delicacy they wanted until both their eyes and tummies bulged!! The ice sculptures and melon carvings were fantastic. We took ours back to our cabin where we savoured every mouthful.

Bear feasting on caught Salmon
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Tonight our friendly cabin steward had left us a cute elephant Towel Creature.