Archive for May, 2004
Posted on May 2, 2004 - by Ralph Grizzle
Curb Your Enthusiasm? No way
Match your preferred activity level to the perfect adventure cruise by clicking on www.glacierbaytours.com (NOTE: Cruise line no longer operating). By answering seven questions, you’ll be presented with a selection of cruises that provide the appropriate amount of activity and adventure. If you book a cruise at the “High Adventure Level,” you’ll spend little time on Glacier Bay Cruiseline’s “Sport Utility Vessels,” the company’ self-coined term for its active-gear-laden cruise ships. Instead, you, your guide and a small group will put out on kayaks early each day in Glacier Bay National Park or Alaska’ Inside Passage for a full-day of exploration. Want your adventure softer? Lower activity levels feature nature walks and easier paddling for short durations. Glacier Bay Cruiseline also operates active cruises — featuring jetboat adventures, white-water rafting, kayaking and hikes — on the Columbia River.
Posted on May 2, 2004 - by Ralph Grizzle
Holiday on Ice
As you sit reading this page, writer Jennifer Niven is preparing to travel to isolated Wrangel Island, off the coast of Russia’s Far East. She has never been there before, although she has written two acclaimed real life dramas of shipwreck and survival that are set there. From July 7 to July 20, Niven will be the guest speaker on Quark Expeditions’ 112-passenger Kapitan Khlebnikov, a powerful icebreaker that crushes through thick ice to reach isolated Wrangel Island. With rates beginning at $9,850 per person, the 14-day program begins and ends in Anchorage. From there, Quark flies passengers to Anadyr, Russia, to board the icebreaker. Act quickly if you want to go. You’ll need a Russian visa, and the wheels of Russian bureaucracy churn slowly.
Operating the largest passenger fleet in the polar regions, Connecticut-based Quark takes travelers even farther north, to the Geographic Pole, aboard its 100-passenger Russian nuclear icebreaker Yamal. Beginning and ending in Helsinki, the 16-day sailings, offered only in July, start at $16,450 per person and include excursions onto and over the ice by Zodiac and helicopter. Expect to see polar bears, walruses and other Arctic wildlife. Don’t worry about the cold. Passengers receive a special expedition parka — for keeps.
November through March, Quark positions four ships on four itineraries to Antarctica and the South Shetland Islands. Operating the only passenger-carrying icebreaker on the Great White Continent, Quark will push deeper into ice-choked Antarctica than ever before, attempting to break a record set by Roald Amundsen more than 100 years ago.
Quark’s ships feature cabins with ocean (and ice) views, professional chefs, ample wine lists, and certainly far more creature comforts than tolerated by the first explorers to these remote regions at the polar ends of the planet. Quark’ expeditions are once-in-a-lifetime voyages. After all, you just don’t get any farther away from it all than you do at the ends of the earth.
