The Voice Of A Traveler

Alaska is officially gone. Well I suppose it’s still there…but I sure ain’t! Today I had the pleasure of having Rebecca Saxton visit me on the ship while I was docked here in San Diego. I had a great time getting to show her around the ship and catching up on the last few months. Unfortunately David couldn’t get off work, although I could see his ship from the deck of my ship.

The weather is noticeably different and it is more than welcome. I’m gonna have a bunch of really great ports over the next three weeks. We are disembarking about 500 passengers who got on the ship in Vancouver, and embarking another 500 to replace them. The next three weeks we will have the same passengers so it’s going to become really slow as far as photo sales go. It’ll be nice cuz we get to close the gallery every now and then. My itinerary is as follows:

September 24: At sea
September 25: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
September 26: At sea
September 27: Acapulco, Guerrero
September 28: At Sea
September 29: Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala
September 30: At Sea
October 1: Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica
October 2: Scenic Cruising (Golfo Dulce)
October 3: Enter Panama Canal
October 4: At Sea
October 5: Willemstad, Curacao
October 6: Oranjestad, Aruba
October 7: At Sea
October 8: Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
October 9: At Sea
October 10: Tampa Bay, Florida

Also, my new mailing address is:

ms RYNDAM – Ian Kee – Image Creator 77538
NOLA Port Agency (Tampa)
301 West Platt St.
Ste. 446
Tampa, FL 33606

Well we have achieved the unthinkable. We are first in the fleet overall. There are 15 Holland America ships all with Ocean Images in the photo department, and the Ryndam is first this week – even ahead of the Oosterdam. That’s not supposed to happen. We sold over $5,000 worth of DVDs last week and made over $30,000 total. The Oosterdam sold more than us I’m sure, but they also have like 60% more passengers, so overall we were the better ship last week. This week is shaping up to be a great week too, so hopefully we can keep that going. We have a lot of changes happening soon though. Today was the last day for our newest photographer who just joined the ship a month ago. He’s getting transferred to the Oosterdam. In San Diego we’re losing two other photographers. Only two people are going to replace the three that are leaving. We’ll be down to five people on the team, but that’s normal for the Caribbean season.

I went sled dogging in Ketchikan last Friday. It wasn’t on a glacier, but at least it was a lot of fun to get to see the dogs and puppies. Clare went with me, and we got to have a ride on a sled that the dogs pulled. It was more like a golf cart actually. The dogs are quite small, but they can go fast and can pull a ton of weight for a long time. Photos are uploaded, and also a few photos from my paintballing experience a couple weeks ago.

The adventure for next week is adventure carting. I don’t really know what that is, but it sounds like a mix between go carts and ATVs. I’m gonna go with one of the other photographers who is leaving in San Diego. I’ll definitely post some photos from that too later. Oh, and we plan to go bungie jumping in Mexico in a few weeks!

It was around 9 o’clock at night and I was working in the photo gallery when all of a sudden the boat listed really hard to one side. A few minutes later it listed hard back to the other side. Later that night when I was down in the bar, some of the cadets said that we nearly ran over a small fishing boat. I guess out here in the ocean the rule of thumb is: be large.

A couple days later I saw a few houses floating by us as we went down the narrows. These were full sized houses too, not just bits and pieces of them. I think they were all tied together and were being pulled by some sort of tugboat. It was formal night and so I was in the middle of shooting photos so I couldn’t get a good look on what exactly was happening, but it sure looked interesting.

I had planned on going dog sledding on the top of a glacier today, but things didn’t work out for that. Instead, I’m gonna go play paintball with a bunch of my crew friends. Should be fun to shoot up my friends.

I’ve also uploaded a few new photos to the gallery. Most of them are from earlier in the season. I went through my photo library and selected a few photos that I found interesting and did the edits. The Indonesians often have their little laptops out and they know where all the wifi hot spots are. In this photo they are all tucked in between two mailboxes. I also find the photo of the old van interesting. This was parked right outside a bar and the band members were either loading or unloading their musical equipment. What I find exceptional is that the license plate is from Washington State. Who knows, maybe they drove all the way up from Washington to Juneau just to play at this bar. From the looks of the van they might have done just that.

Also, please don’t send any more mail to my Ketchikan address. I only have about 2 more weeks in Alaska and I don’t want to lose anything that you want to send to me. I will update my address once I get to the Caribbean. It will be an address in Tampa Bay.