Alaska Cruise (Part 2 – Juneau)

After Ketchikan, we headed to Juneau, which is Alaska’s capital, and is also the state’s second largest city. It is a unique destination for a myriad of reasons.  Juneau sits nestled up next to the Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle with no connecting roads to other cities – making it only accessible by water and air, including via Juneau cruise port.

In Juneau, we had a chance to go on a whale watching tour, which was an absolutely amazing experience. When we boarded our ship, the Chilcoat, our Captain asked each of us to tell him our expectations for the adventure. One of the passengers said that he wanted to see Orca whales. The Captain visibly groaned and said ‘well you may be disappointed because only about 15% of the tours get to see them’. Despite that bit of information, we set out to see what nature had to offer us.

The entire boat ride was so exciting. At our first stop we saw several humpback whales, unfortunately, none of them wanted to ‘show us some tail’, as our Captain kept saying. The humpbacks were only doing shallow dives, so they didn’t need to get their tail out of the water.  They only do this when they want to dive deep into the water.

Even when there wasn’t a whale breaking the surface of the water, there were plenty of beautiful sights to see.

We headed over to another spot where we saw several boats hanging out.  There we got the thrill of a lifetime.  As we approached the area, we realized why the boats were there.  A pod of Orca whales were in the area. Check out the video below.

Things got really exciting when the Captain shut off the engine. The pod of orcas came right up beside the boat. They came in so quickly that I didn’t get a chance to turn on the video, but I did get some pictures. They were right up against the boat. I did not have the camera zoomed in.

I was able to switch to video while they were still near the boat.

We also had a chance to see some sea lions while we were out. These lazy bums were hanging out on one of the channel buoys sleeping the day away.

What an exciting trip! We had an amazing time watching the whales. If you get the chance to do a whale watching tour in Juneau, make sure you check our this tour company https://www.harvandmarvs-juneau-whale-watching.com/. They use smaller boats that hold about 20 people, which makes the entire adventure much more enjoyable.