Land Navigation In Costa Rica Article

A serpentine queue of passengers waited more or less patiently to embark on the Ballantyne Pier in Vancouver. Behind me an elderly couple who had just flown in from Australia, were beginning visibly to wilt. Their airplane had landed at the Vancouver Airport only three hours before. The dawdling at the pier was a creation of 9-11. Security had been increased since the terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Centre on 11 September, 2001, and though it seems bizarre to think that a couple of terrorists armed with exacto knives could commandeer a cruise ship, the authorities in the Port of Vancouver were taking no chances. None of the passengers that I could see fitted the terrorist profile. They were mostly middle-aged, and tending to overweight. Perhaps some might have passed for superannuated IRA terrorists, but none resembled a dark-visaged, lean and hungry Hamas operative. This was a segment of the First World middle class, on holiday, setting out on a cruise to Alaska and back.

The attraction of Alaska for cruises goes back a hundred years. The Canadian Pacific Railway began steamship service to Alaska over a century ago. The little CPR 'Princess' coastal liners that served Alaska and the British Columbia coast are only a fond memory now, but they were the trailblazers of the 'Inside Passage' between Vancouver Island and the mainland, north to the Alaska Panhandle. They made the run before radar and sonar in waters that were poorly charted, and they paid a price for it. A mere six and a half months after Canadian Pacific took over the Alaska route in 1901, one of its vessels was wrecked off Douglas Island south of Juneau, the capital of Alaska, with the loss of forty-two lives. Worse was to come. In 1918, the Princess Sophia, 2320 gross tons, left Skagway in a snowstorm and headed down the long fjord misleadingly named the Lynn Canal, blowing her whistle steadily and measuring the minutes and seconds it took for the echo to return. It was the standard method of the day for estimatin g the distance from the land, but it was less than accurate, particularly in a storm. Halfway between Skagway and Juneau, the Sophia slammed into the Vanderbilt reef, which was marked only by a single bell buoy, invisible at night. She was lost with all her passengers. In 1952, another Canadian Pacific ship on an Alaskan cruise, the Princess Kathleen, collided with Shelter Island not far from the Vanderbilt Reef, and sank, though this time no passengers were lost. Modem cruise ships nowadays casually pass close by these perils of the sea, now well marked, and defanged by twenty-first century navigational aids. But the Lynn Canal can still be dangerous: in 1995, the Star Princess struck a rock near Juneau and had to limp to Portland, Oregon, for repairs.

In 1981, Canadian Pacific ended its Alaska service. The last of its little liners, the Princess Patricia, was retired. But before she ended her career she spent two winters, from 1965 to 1967, chartered to operate between Los Angeles and Acapulco for Princess Cruises. Princess Cruises was soon acquired by the P and 0 Line and went on to a greater future, but the little Princess Patricia was designed for northern waters, not for hot weather conditions. Princess Cruises acquired its own fleet of 'Love Boats' and the Patricia returned to the British Columbia Coast where she plied the Alaska route for a few more years. When she retired, it seemed as if an era of navigation on the North American west coast had ended.

Then cruising to Alaska came into vogue again, with a vengeance. Between 3 and 21 May, 2002, there were twenty-eight sailings out of Vancouver. The ships ranged from the Spirit of Columbia with 80 passengers to the Star Princess with 2600. They fly flags of convenience and recruit their crews from around the world, which is the chief reason why Vancouver in Canada is the favourite port of departure, for the 'Jones Act', passed by the United States Congress after the First World War to protect the American mercantile marine, prohibits foreign-flag ships from carrying passengers or cargo between two American ports. But Vancouver may not enjoy its preferred status much longer. The port of Seattle wants some of the business, and after the September 11, 2001, destruction of the New York World Trade Centre, Americans are more timid about foreign ports like Vancouver. Canada has a reputation, not entirely undeserved, of being too hospitable to terrorist organizations. In 2003, the new Norwegian Sun will sail to Alas ka not from Vancouver but Seattle.

The Norwegian Wind, with 1,742 passengers on board, pulled away from the pier and headed out of Vancouver harbour about 7 . It was the end of April and daylight was beginning to fade. But as we passed under the Lions' Gate Bridge out of the harbour, there was a rainbow over the ship's bow: a good omen for the week ahead. Next day, at the captain's champagne party, we were introduced to the ship's officers. The captain was Norwegian, but the rest came from Costa Rica, Morocco, South Africa and Britain. The Norwegian Wind featured free-style dining. There were no sittings; passengers came to one of the ship's restaurants when they felt like it, and if a table was available, they took it. The attendants were even more multinational than the ship's officers. A waitress from Romania told us that her father had been killed under the Communist regime and she had been raised by her mother who worked hard so that her daughter wanted for nothing. It was now time to repay. One tour with Norwegian Cruise Line will all ow her to buy an apartment in Romania for her mother and herself. A second tour will pay for another apartment which she will rent, and the rental income along with a job in the post office paying $ a month would be enough to get by. Capitalism had not brought Romanians an easy life, she said. You might see two parents working hard for a living, and yet their children would beg for food in the streets.

How had she found her job, my wife asked a hairdresser in the Norwegian Wind's salon. She was Filipino, and had been a hairdresser in the Peninsula Hotel in Manila before she went to sea. She saw an advertisement in a Manila newspaper. She was interviewed on a Monday, and on the following Wednesday, she was on board ship. She liked her job. Accommodations on shipboard were good, language training was available, there was time off, and there was money to be made.

We reached Juneau about 5 . on 1 May. The weather was mild with a hint of rain. Juneau is accessible only by air or by ship, but it is the Alaska State capital, and its most impressive edifice is the governor's mansion, a Greek Revival structure which was built for $46 million, according to a plaque sited outside the fence that surrounded it. Two rhododendrons were about to bloom in the governor's garden, which looked as if it had survived a hard winter. At the beginning of May, spring was still a recent arrival here.

Not far away, up Franklin Street, was St. Nicholas' Russian Orthodox church, which is badly in need of repair, but inside it, the priest was holding a choir practice and his welcome was warm. Next door was a Roman Catholic church in good repair. There were signs in windows along the street announcing The Trojan Women by Euripides, produced by a local theatre group. I picked up a copy of the Juneau Empire (The Voice of Alaska since 1912) which reported that the arrival of the Norwegian Sky only the day before the Norwegian Wind had opened the tourist season. Tourists who got bargain fares at the beginning and end of the season were poor tippers, the paper reported.

When we woke up the next day, the Norwegian Wind had already docked at Skagway. Or Skaguay, as the natives spell it. 'Skagway', spelled with a 'w', is an emendation of the United States Post Office. Skagway's year-round population is about 750, and it has no resident doctor or dentist, but it does have six policemen. Skagway's brief era of fame began on 17 July, 1897, when the steamer Portland docked in Seattle with gold from a strike in the Canadian Yukon, and an imaginative reporter wrote that she had more than a ton of solid gold aboard', taken from the Klondike which no one had heard of until then. Times where hard, and the report sparked a gold rush to the Klondike where a few got rich and most did not. From Skagway there were two mountain passes into Canada from the Alaska Panhandle: the White Pass and the more famous Chilkoot. The United States had purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, but it had neglected to provide it with a proper government, with the result that in Skagway, law and order was in the hands of a gambler from Colorado named 'Soapy' Smith. His career ended in an exchange of bullets. The man who killed him also lost his life, but it was generally agreed that the sacrifice was worth it. But once the gold seekers crossed the Canadian border, the Northwest Mounted Police took control, and their idea of law and order was very different from what prevailed in Skagway. The gold seekers seemed to welcome it.

The narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Railway from Skagway to Lake Bennett in Canada was built by a group of British financiers led by Sir Thomas Tancred while the Klondike Gold Rush was still in full swing, but even though it was completed in only two years, the rush was over by the time it was finished. The little railway had to make a living transporting lead and zinc ore from mines in the Yukon to the Skagway dock. It came into its own again during the Second World War, when its little steam engines hauled in supplies for the United States Army which was building the Alaska Highway, and after the war, it branched into container ships and highway tractor-trailer units. But in 1982, world metal prices fell, the Yukon mines closed down and the trains stopped rolling on the little WP&YR. Then came the cruise ships. The WP&YR began to run excursion trains in the summer of 1988, and they found a ready clientele. In winter, the railway falls asleep again, and so does most of Skagway.

We boarded the train at the dock. Leaving Skagway it passed a cemetery with markers for the graves of gold seekers who got no further, and then, four miles out, the railroad began its climb, from sea level to 2,865 feet. The men who built this railway had to hang suspended by ropes from vertical cliffs, blasting and hacking out a roadbed. Yet deaths were remarkably few, and most of them were due not to accidents but to an outbreak of spinal meningitis, and another of scarlet fever. At Mile 16, a tunnel had to be blasted through the mountainside with gunpowder. But the job was done, and the WP&YR is now recognized as one of the thirty-six engineering achievements that have been declared International Civil Engineering Landmarks. The WP&YR brochure points out that it shares that distinction with the Eiffel Tower.

The piece de resistance of the Alaska cruises, however, is Glacier Bay. It is a good example of Global Warming in the last two centuries. When Captain James Cook visited this area, there was no bay to be seen. The glacier filled the whole inlet. But by the time Captain Vancouver arrived in 1794, the glacier had retreated enough that he could chart the beginnings of a bay, and since then Glacier Bay has grown into a long fjord reaching the Canadian border. The Norwegian Wind sailed in fearlessly. Her passengers gathered at the rail to see the wall of grey ice surrounding us on three sides, an ancient survivor of the Pleistocene Period, now in full retreat. Then back to the Observation Lounge to hear a lecture by the ship's biologist on seals and sea lions.

Last stop: Ketchikan. Ketchikan has a claim to two designations: the 'Rain Capital of North America' (it is in a rain forest) or the 'Salmon Capital of the World' for its main industry at one time was canning the Pacific salmon, not to be confused with Atlantic salmon. Its main industry now is tourism. The shops along the harbour have false fronts, displaying a refurbished authenticity. Ketchikan is ready for the eager shopper.

The Norwegian Wind was on her voyage home to Vancouver. We entered Canadian waters and passed through Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound and Queen Charlotte Strait where the Japanese Current meets the northern tip of Vancouver Island. At lunch, I shared a table with a couple from Perth in Australia. They had flown to Vancouver via Singapore for the Alaska cruise. It was a trip they had always wanted to take. For the first time on the voyage, the service at our table was poor. Perhaps the report had reached the dining room staff which the Juneau Empire had purveyed, that tourists at the beginning and end of the season who get bargain fares are poor tippers. Or perhaps the Filipino lad who looked after us lacked sufficient clout in the kitchen.

James Allan Evans lives on Mayne Island off the coast of British Columbia, where he can see cruise ships passing during the summer months.