Beyond Alaska

Oh, wow. It's been six months since I finished the Alaska tour and I never completed the story. Well for anyone reading this I'll have to summarise in the next paragraph. If we meet in person before I forget the details I'll be happy to elaborate with much enthusiasm on the following:

Juneau was pretty, and expensive. I will never forget that a salmon lunch at a remote cottage for two (accessible only by seaplane) cost $400. But the glaciers were most memorable and seeing them by seaplane was a great way to do it. Skagway was my favourite port of call: the town retains its rustic Gold Rush image. The White Pass train ride (diesel powered) was spectacular with fantastic scenery worth every moment sitting out of the car, getting vista photos with the wide angle. I even saw a working steam train in Skagway, doing maintenance duty and not pulling passengers, but running nonetheless! Ketchikan was a let-down partly because we arrived into port so late that the best tours were booked out. We did a last minute taxi tour just to do something and although I got nice shots of the bald eagles it was more disappointment than pleasure. For those who might go on this cruise in the future, save your money for Ketchikan. Some of the more unique local items I saw on the trip were sold there.

Since Alaska I've done the usual summer things, the two most notable being (1) I learned how to swim and (2) Pennsic War. It was uncomfortably humid at War this year, that kept most of the folks sweltering away in their tents instead of being out and about. For merchants that meant drastically reduced sales. No one wanted to think about shopping. Those of you who don't know, I am part owner of a merchant business at Pennsic: we run a cyber cafe for the masses. And I have to say we put a lot of effort this year into improving both appearance and services. It paid off. We did well despite the heat although I am certain had the weather been more tolerable we would have done much better. Anyway I am happy to have done as well as we did, and I personally want to thank everyone who patronised our business and appreciated our upgrades.

I'm back in Cozumel now, on a three month stay. Actually the truth is I am in Akumal a small hotel district south of Playa del Carmen as I write this. This blog took a back seat for too long and I needed to do some quick catch-up. I'd been on Cozumel for six weeks already, doing open water diving and whatnot, then started a week-long tour of cave diving. But that's for the next blog entry, starting in just a moment!

I'll have some nice pictures of Cozumel-so-far-this-trip after I've had a chance to slow down and post-process them. This trip has been somewhat difficult because I've been spending more time per week consulting than I do at home. Great for the income, difficult on the vacation part of my vacation. Oops, did I say I was on vacation?