A peaceful night on still waters, books read in our cabins, and an almost too quiet, too dark existence. The boats engines started at 6am (or earlier). We scrambled to get dressed to watch the sunrise, but…
Yay? Bad weather!
Our boat docked in one of the more remote arms of the fjord overnight. We explored the area the following morning, witnessing millions of waterfalls, pulling up right next to the rocks (making Sly nervous) so that we could touch the water spilling off the rock. Afterward, we pulled into a small cove. The captain shut off the engines again, and asked that everyone observe 15 minutes of silence – no talking, no cameras, just be in the moment. As you can probably guess, when you have a boat full of tourists, that was asking the impossible.
A memory of breakfast: Two older British ladies who spoke little, if not at all, the entire trip, sat next to us in the mess hall. For whatever reason, I remember their conversation. It went something like this:
Lady 1: My, this is lovely toast
Lady 2: Quite right, quite right
Lady 1: And have you tried the jam?
Lady 2: I quite like this red jam, but have you tried the marmalade?
Lady 1: No, but it looks lovely.
This was their entire conversation for 45 MINUTES: toast and jam. Not the cruise, not the dolphins, not the beautiful scenery, but the first time these two ladies spoke, it was to talk about toast and jam?
On the flip side, I met a Kiwi (dubbed “The Crazy Kiwi” by other members of the boat) in the wee hours of the morning when I was shooting some super 8 footage. He startled the crap out of me, more so because I’m not a talk-to-strangers type of person, and here was this guy smiling and walking towards me moving his mouth. He was an extreme bmxer (or something like that, maybe motorcross), and had gotten free tickets from his wife who worked at a travel agency. Anyway, long story short, an enjoyable morning chatting with this guy – he pretty much summed up most of the Kiwis we met on our trip: very talkative, very funny, and very warm. And maybe just a little bit ‘crazy.’
