Bering Sea Cruise

Bear!" someone yelled, causing everyone in the dining room to

scurry for the exits. A grizzly had been spotted swimming across
the bow of the ship, so like everyone else, my wife and I raced to
the railing, where we watched a huge bear doing the breast
stroke, occasionally turning its head around and giving us what I
presumed to be a dirty look.

I think it was in plane geometry class when I first started

dreaming about the Bering Sea. I was always thinking about
places at the other end of the world in that class. So last year
when my wife hinted that we take a cruise of the Bering Sea,
visiting such remote places as the Bering Strait, Russia's Far
East, Yupik Eskimo villages, and those storm-hammered Aleutian
Islands, I wasn't hard to convince. Her idea was to take a cruise
on the Spirit of Oceanus exploration ship, starting at Nome
winding our way through the Bering Sea, stopping at a few
Siberian ports and Eskimo villages, heading south to the
Aleutians and then up the Alaskan Peninsula through Kodiak and
Homer, eventually reaching Anchorage. All this would take two
weeks.

First Day: Nome.

After flying to Nome from Seattle via Anchorage, we decided to

do a little gold panning along the western Alaskan town's famed
Gold Coast before boarding the ship.

"You've got about two cents

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worth in there, mister," an old timer muttered as he ran his

fingers through what appeared to be gravel at the bottom of my
pan. At the time of the Nome Gold Rush of 1898 the area
bustled with boom-town activity, but nowadays the main doings
are more apt to be the Iditarod Dog Sled Race or one of the bars
along Front Street.

First day at sea

First day out, the Spirit of Oceanus headed north to the Bering
Strait, those 55 miles of open sea which separate Asia and North
America, where smack in the middle sit the two tiny islands of
Big and Little Diomede, 2 miles apart. Little Diomede is part of
the United States, and Big D to the west lies on the other side of
the International Date Line and is part of Russia.

From the ship's deck through an overcast sky we make out Little
D, a miniscule outcropping of granite lined with specks of snow.
It was not as cold as we expected, the temperature hovering
around 60 degrees F. The sea ice had just gone out here and the
water temperature was 35 F. We were 30 miles south of the
Arctic Circle and in this part of the world, in the summer, the sun
hits the horizon and bounces right back up. As the ship drew
closer, we could make out a settlement of tiny wooden
structures directly beneath a large rookery of murres.

"This is home to 125 Inupiat [In-U-piat] Eskimos," my wife read

from our guidebook. She read further that the Inupiats are a
nation of people with similar languages that occupy the
circumpolar region of the Earth all the way from Siberia, through
Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Experiencing Eskimo culture was
one of the highlights of the trip. In more hospitable regions of
Earth, anyone can secure food and shelter, but in the Arctic
every moment of life is earned with human ingenuity
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By now zillions of sea birds such as murres, auklets, puffins,

fulmars, and cormorants were screaming overhead, diving into
the sea feeding on sea life brought to the surface by turbulence
from the ship. Capt. Scanlon finally cast anchor and passengers
boarded Zodiacs for the ride ashore, whereupon we were
warmly greeted by the locals, who get precious few visitors.

"Walrus is good," a boy of about 10 told us, pointing to strips of

walrus hanging from a drying rack. Once killed, seal, walrus,
polar bear, birds and other meats are hung out to dry and later
kept in a community freezer. Exploring the settlement, we saw
drying racks of meat, walrus-skin boats, harpoons, and a cooler
labeled, "Polar Bear Samples."

Later we attended a dance performance at the school gym,

which consisted of traditional Inupiat dances accompanied by
beating on walrus-skin drums. After the performance, we got a
chance to mingle and chat. A lady named Frances complained of
the hot weather they were having, and when I commented it
was 60 F., she laughed and said she couldn't stand it over 60.

We also learned that in Alaska it is OK to refer to Eskimos as

Eskimos, and not by their nation name, such as Yupik or Inupiat
Eskimos. Of course you are showing some ignorance of Eskimo
culture, but it is PC to use the more generic word. In Canada and
Greenland, however, the Inuit Eskimos consider the word Eskimo
degrading and prefer to be called Inuits.

"This is the only place in the U.S. where you can see the future,"
Frances laughed, pointing to Big Diomede on the other side of
the International Date Line and a day in the future.

Provideniya and New Chaplino, Siberia

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The port of Provideniya on the northeast edge of Siberia is 200

miles west of its sister city of Nome across the Bering Sea.
Russians back in Moscow call this the Russian Far East, which is
understandable since it is closer to Washington D.C. than
Moscow. During Soviet times, Provideniya was a military outpost
of 10,000 people, but now its population has shrunk to 2,000.

The place is an ugly bi-product of Soviet bureaucracy. It reeks of

coal tar and oil, the skyline dominated by grimy smokestacks
and empty box-type apartment buildings with smashed
windows. It was like walking into a Mad Max movie. On the dock
we saw rusting cranes, idle so long they'd become nesting
grounds for eagles. Most Russians have returned to their homes
in warmer climes, but as the Russians leave, Yupik Eskimos and
Chukchis (local reindeer hunters) move in, seeking relief from
even bleaker conditions in their villages.

"Is that irony or not?" my wife asks rhetorically as we explore

the empty streets, referring to a rusting statue of Lenin.

"He's part of our heritage," Olga, our Provideniya guide, told us

later, referring to the statue. "We don't necessarily agree with
his philosophy."

While in Provideniya, we were treated to traditional Russian

dance at the Provideniya Cultural Center. From outside, the
place didn't look like much, but inside it had beautiful
decorations and draperies. We didn't expect anything from the
young dancers, living in such bleak surroundings, but once the
show began, their Russian heritage came through and they, like
they say, blew us away.
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There is only one road out of Provideniya and that is across the
tundra to the Yupik settlement of New Chaplino and there is only
one word to describe that road. Washboard. I didn't know what
to expect when we finally arrived at New Chaplino, but it
certainly wasn't an old Soviet tank giving rides to screaming
children and soon our cruise shipmates.

"The government left it here after the Cold War," someone said.
On the beach, we saw the remains of a grey whale which looked
like it was melting in the sun, oil dripping from the carcass into
puddles and running into streams.

Watch where you walk," a local man said. "That stuff won't come
off."

"We use almost every part of the whale," a village elder told us
as we looked at the part they didn't. He told us after the whale
was pulled ashore (Remember the tank?), they carved the skin
and blubber into blocks, sliced off filets of steaks, sawed off
meaty bones such as giant spareribs, then cut off the tongue,
longer than a man's body, and set it aside as a delicacy. A single
grey whale will feed 400 villagers for two weeks.

Under the old Soviet rule, local Yupik Eskimos and Chukchis
were forced into collective farms, where they raised foxes fed on
whale and walrus meat. The fur was sold in the West, ending up
in upscale fur salons. This harebrained idea of Soviet
bureaucracy caused the native people to lose subsistence-
survival skills obtained over thousands of years, and when the
Soviet Union collapsed and the fox farms abandoned, it forced
the natives back in time. They had the choice of either starving
or returning to the traditions of their ancestors.
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Later at a native dance presentation, a Yupik lady offered us

some local
cuisine: fermented walrus. "Eat it," my wife said. "That's the best
part of the walrus." Ignoring her flippancy, I took a whiff and
came to the conclusion it was an acquired taste. I thought eating
some might brand me as a bona fide Arctic explorer, but
throwing bravery to the wind, I told the lady I just ate. She
laughed and said, "OK."

In one of the most heroic sea adventures of all time, Danish sea
captain Vitus Bering was the first European to discover the coast
of Alaska while on an imperial mission from Russian Czar Peter
the Great. In two voyages in 1728 and 1741, Bering led
expeditions from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia in search of
Gamaland, a legendary landmass which 18th century Russians
believed connected Asia and North America. In the first voyage,
Bering reached a stormy sea strait, 55 miles of rough waters
separating the continents, which now bears his name, the Bering
Strait.

St. Lawrence and Nunivak Islands

The next day found us in Gambell, a small Yupik village on St.

Lawrence Island and U.S. soil, 50 miles off the Siberian coast.

"Some whales sink when we harpoon them. We put floats on the

harpoons," a village elder in Gambell told us. "We have lost
many whales by their sinking," he went on.

"Talk about your fish that got away," I muttered.

"Mammal," my wife corrected me.

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"A pod of grey whales has been spotted on the starboard side of
the ship," an announcement came over the ship speakers as my
wife and I were having our noonday brunch on the hind deck.
Luckily, we were on the starboard side so we just kicked back
and watched. When it comes to wildlife watching while everyone
is ohhing and ahhing, I'm the guy who's saying, "I don't see it.
Where are they?" I'm the Mr. Magoo of nature watching.

But it didn't take a trained eye to see these guys. They were
spouting all around us. It was a tidal wave of whales. They swam
alongside the ship, their giant hulks rising slowly out of the
water to a chorus of ohs from the passengers, then, as graceful
as ballerinas, settling back into the sea.

"If we're lucky, we'll see some musk oxen," naturalist Rich
Kirchner told us the next day as we hit the beach on Nunivak
Island, 40 miles off the southwest coast of Alaska. I whispered to
my wife that I thought they were extinct, and she whispered
back I'm thinking of the wooly mammoth.

Walking across the spongy tundra was like walking on a

Posturepedic Mattress. I could have lain down and gone to sleep
right there. We knew we were hot on the trail of some musk ox
since occasionally we found clumps of their soft under-hair.
Suddenly, we came over a rise and before us was a small herd,
grazing on tundra vegetation. They were a quarter mile away
and must have caught our scent since some looked in our
direction. There were 24 of us, and I counted 24 of them. We
stood motionless looking at them, and they were doing exactly
the same. I don't know what they were thinking, but I was
thinking I hope they aren't in a bad mood.

Alaska musk oxen became extinct in the late 1800s due to

overhunting. When approached by an enemy, musk oxen herd
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themselves together in the form of a circle or semicircle with the

calves inside. Such a formation is effective against wolves, but
not against men with high-powered rifles. In 1930, a herd of 34
musk oxen was brought to Nunivak Island from Greenland where
they have since thrived. Since then, some musk oxen from
Nunivak have been relocated to other parts of Alaska, and today
the musk oxen population in Alaska is estimated at 2,500.

On the second Bering voyage of 1741, Bering's ship reached

what is now southeast Alaska, but returning to Russia they faced
heavy seas, eventually crashing on a reef on a remote island in
the Commodore Islands and having to winter there. Of the 177
seamen who started the voyage, almost half, including Bering,
died from starvation, scurvy and cold. The island where they
stayed and where Bering died is now called Bering Island.

The Aleutians and the Alaskan Peninsula

The Aleutian Islands consist of 1,100 miles of volcanic specks

that curl like a giant smiley face between Asia and North
America. They stretch so far to the west that the westernmost
point of the U.S., Attu Island, is farther west than half of New
Zealand.

"Dutch Harbor has had several boom times in the past," our
guide told us after we arrived at Dutch Harbor, a town on
Amaknak Island in the Aleutians. First, there was the fur boom,
started right after Bering explored these waters, then the gold
boom of 1898 when it was a transshipment point for Nome gold,
then World War II, and now the fishing boom. "During WWII, the
Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor and captured the Aleutian
Islands of Attu and Kista," the guide said.
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"This is the No. 1 fishing port in the U.S.," our guide's voice
came through the speakers while on a motor coach tour of
Dutch Harbor. "More pounds of fish are caught here than
anywhere in the U.S.," the voice continued. It also told us that
Dutch Harbor was the home of the King Crab, and a lot of money
can be made on crabbing boats.

If there is one thing that's true of all Alaskans, it's how proud
they are of how long they've been there. Apart from Native
Eskimos and American Indians, we met few people who were
actually born there, but every conversation would eventually
come to a point where they would volunteer their "Alaskan Age".

"I'm just a beginner," a young lady working in a grocery in Dutch

Harbor and formerly from Washington state told us almost
apologetically. "I've only been here three years - but I'm
staying," she insisted. A young man running a sports store in
Kodiak and formerly from Maine said he'd been there 27 years.
"I love it," he said. "In three more years I'll make the Pioneer
Club," referring to an honor given to 30-year residents.

"What is it you're supposed to do when you meet a grizzly?" I

asked my wife as we boarded our Zodiac in search of bears in
Katmai National Park on the Alaskan Peninsula. "Do you look into
their eyes or away?" Bear expert, Rupert Pilkington, told us
proper bear etiquette the night before, but I had forgotten. From
our Zodiac, we didn't actually have to meet one, but watched
offshore from 100 yards as they foraged along the beach.

"Do they swim?" someone asked.

The next day found us in Homer, the self-proclaimed Halibut

Capital of the World, where we started to feel we were back in
civilization with all the gift shops, art galleries, and the
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unquestioned seal of civilization, McDonalds. The people of

Homer say they have it all: adventure tours, world-class halibut
and salmon fishing, grizzly bear viewing, glaciers, whales, art
galleries, hiking, big-game hunting and more. We spent the day
exploring the town and famed Homer Spit, that 4.5-mile stretch
of sand lined with charter boats eager to help you land that 300-
pound halibut and ship it back to the Lower 48.

The next day we arrived in Anchorage and flew back to Seattle.

As the Alaskan Airlines 737 headed south, I looked down on
Prince William Sound and later on the glaciers of the Inside
Passage. This was a different Alaska from what we had seen in
the Bering Sea. It was almost tropical. We just might have to
come back I was thinking.

- the end -