Bikini & Boots

Dear God, I cannot Believe its already been 2 weeks plus since I got back from Alaska ! Trying to catch up with work the past weeks has been rough but regardless of how long its been since Alaska, that trip was something and it will always always stay with me. If I have the opportunity, I will definitely head that way again.

The trip was so activity intensive, that its impossible to write about everything in one post. I will have to go day by day ! So, stay with me if you want to live through my experiences.

I will start with the night we flew into Anchorage and right from the airport, drove over to Seward. You know you are in Alaska, because, right away at the airport, none of our “Emerald Club Member Privileges” with National Car Rental were recognized. There was this huge line, and we ran around quite a bit trying to find the Emerald Club lot, where you can just walk up and pick whatever car you want, and drive of. But NOO, not here. We had to finally accept defeat and march up to the tail end of the line. The people who had been standing there the past 15 minutes were indulgently smiling at us – newbies. We had to wait a looong time before we got our car. The distance from Anchorage to Seward for some reason comes up at 4.5 hours on Mapquest. But in reality, its only 2.5 hrs plus minus 15 minutes. But since it was past 10 pm by the time we got out of the airport, it was around 12:30 at night by the time we got to Seward. We were on an excitement overdrive as we neared Seward. Half an hour out of Anchorage – the road started following “Turnaround Arm” and in the semi darkness, we could see the shimmering water in the moonlight snaking between the rocky hillside. That first glimpse of Alaska for me is the essence of Alaskan landscape near the coast – mountain and water – two pf my most favorite elements all together.

Seward is a small place – and very safe probably. We stayed at Moby Dick hostel – the lady who charmingly told us on the phone, with a heavy accent, the “private room is very basic, just a room with a twin bed” also said she would leave a note for us on the window. So, we looked around for Mobby Dick in the darkness, slowly cruising in the darkness and stopping at houses to peer at the numbers. There were few people on the road and for the 1st week of sep, it was pleasantly chilly. The hostel came upon us suddenly. We parked the car and couldn’t find the note on the office window. So, we opened the door to the hostel and stepped inside – our boots clumped loudly on the stairs as we climbed upstairs. The whole hostel is tiny and we felt like giants, like Alice in wonderland ! As we opened and closed doors, somehow the bunk beds of sleeping folks weren’t disturbed. ( we were to sleep as deeply in the next 9 days – exhausted after an exciting day) Finally, we clumped back to the office in search of our note – and this time we found it taped to the window of the DOOR. Well, the note was cute – Hello Rupa, welcome to Mobby Dick. Your room is in a different building, number 436. Its 2 blocks further. To unlock the door – first press the 3rd button, then the last button and then turn the knob to your right. You can check-in in the morning.
So back to the car, and down two blocks – fiddling with the lock and we were in the house – apparently, there were two rooms (who was in the second?), one shared bath and one shared kitchen. There was “free food” on the kitchen counter as well as in the fridge. I loved this place already. Our room turned out to be insanely tiny and lovely. The lady had been right, it had a single lampshade hanging from the top, cute window curtains, one queen bed and unbelievably, one bunk bed against the wall. We unpacked quickly. I forgot to tell – we had bought only one medium suitcase and one overnight – the overnight was filled with energy bars, instant mashed potatoes, instant rice, tinned potatoes, soup packets and instant oatmeal !. Laugh as you want but this foresight was to come real handy over the next 9 days. We had also brought some beef casserole, which we ate on our drive down to Seward. So now, we were all ready for next day. I pulled out my snorkel, mask and fins – I was going scuba diving in the cold waters of Alaska and Karan was going to hike upto Hardings Ice-field – a 6 hr hike.

We slept like babies that night – happy with the anticipation of the next day. In the morning, we drove back to Mobby Dick at 7 in the morning – and left a note back saying we would be cak in the evening to check in as I was going scuba diving and karan was going hiking to the glacier. Karan drove the 7 blocks to the harbor to drop me off, before he drove off the 30 minute drive to the base of Hardings.

My Scuba instructions told me to come with a subway sandwich and look around the harbor for the Dancing Queen – a small boat. I found my team fairly quickly – the scuba gear gave them away J I was going with Scott and his group from Dive Alaska. They are based in Anchorage but drive down for the dive to Resurrection Bay in Seward. Our boat took off for the hour plus ride in the Resurrection Bay, dodging islands as we gawked at the beauty that was Alaska – cold waters, Beautiful hills, bases plunging in the waters. We were navigating our way to the dive spot. I was hoping to see some Sea lions if not whales during the dive – regretfully – Scott took us wall diving because this was our first dive plus we all were inexperienced enough to avoid such sea monsters. Despite missing sea lions and whales, the dive was a lot of fun. I was overweighed in the beginning, so overturned on my back, face skywards, the minute I hit the water and try as I might, I couldn’t straighten up. ( I was wearing a dry suit – the water wasn’t that cold but was still cold at 60 F) Plus, the minute I would deflate my suit, instead of sinking slowly to the bottom, I sank like a ball of lead. Not withstanding the pain in my ear as I shot 20 ft down to the bottom, I tried to scramble away from the HUGE arms and fronds that I seemed to be falling on top of. Were these arms of octopuses? I was frenzied ! A second later calmed down, realizing that nothing was wrapping itself around me and infact, those long leafy looking this were infact beautiful. I don’t know how much damage I did ecologically to the Kelp Forest that day but I did destroy their beautiful serenity by alternately crashing down and shooting up legs first to the surface several times. Once you have had some dry suit training, you will realize how hilarious but frustrating it is to control leg first ascent – that too 20 ft. Anyway, by the time I got weighted right, I had come to realize that these waters had some of the most beautiful invertebrates that I had seen close up. My instructor got stung by a jelly fish, but I was lucky enough to evade them. I saw forests of purple star fishes, star fish on star fish slapped ontop of each other, like they were out on a crowded beach, sunning themselves – fishes darting behind rocks, and tons of sea anemones. As I caught my breath, hovering over yet another group of star fishes, I saw a HUGE sea anemone – larger than my head, pump its way towards me, as it came close to my face, it turned over and opened up – did this beautiful thing plan to eat me ? Impossible since I just had to swat my hand. Was it playing with me? I don’t know because at that moment my buddy came up on me and the sea anemone quickly flipped over and quickly pumped away.

The day ended far too quickly – I could not believe 5 hours had already passed away. (I don’t have any pictures as yet – Scott will e-mail me some pics later.) By the time we got back to the harbor – it was close to 6 pm. Karan was in the harbor, looking at the ships. As I called out to him – he looked surprised to see me. He still claims that he did not come there looking for me but was just checking out the boats. His hike had been fantastic and over in 4 hours – he had found an Australian hiker and saw lots of bears close to the trail. The Hardings trail ascends 2,300 ft in 2 hours! Half way through the trail he said, the trees give away and its just rocks and one place – a valley of flowers. When they came upon the ice field, karan tried to walk on the snow but his companion stopped him – some of the places there are “holes” right under the snow, that fall 50 feet sometimes. If you fall, the bodies are flushed out 3 and sometimes 5 days later at the base of the mountain. I was glad he was back safe. His Australian friend took some pics, which he will e-mail in a few days. I will post them then.

Anyway, we got an ice-cream with the other divers and agreed to meet two later in the bars – to tell you the truth, there are only two in the downtown, but they were nice. I like the Alaskans that were in there – rugged, lean, jeans tucked in rubber boots, and happy. The evening was nice – some locals singing nice folk song, nice beer and we were nodding off. For the next day, our plan was to explore Seward, drive back to Anchorage to catch our flight to Juneau.

That’s all for today – this is a pretty long post – shall share more in the next post !

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Mountain Water, Travel, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.