Hubbard Glacier until recently has been the fog-capital of the route. We’ve been surrounded week after week by a thick blanket of white, with the glacier looming up in front of us suddenly only because our captain is so brilliant at nosing us in so close to the ice itself (“No one. Takes your life in his hands, like Capt. H!”) – today though, we got something none of us expected: an unprecedented day of clear.
So clear, that you could see the scudded shadows of the clouds on the contours of the mountains.
With rain having been the heavy prediction all week, to the point where our Cruise Director made sure to remind us to “undersell, over deliver” when we were talking about the weather (“because if we tell them it’s going to be rotten and we get one day of clear, we’ve done our job”) – the sight of the mountains rearing up to either side of us this morning in great clear towers of white-capped green was one for sore eyes.
When the weather in Disenchantment Bay is good, there is really no place more breathtaking, the water turns a delicious nearly-tropical shade of green and the ship is moving so slowly that it seems we hardly leave a wake. And the ice is a brilliant white against the green, like someone has dropped irregular pieces of glass or pearl in the water.
If any of your grandparents ever did jigsaw puzzles – this looks like something out of a Clemonoti 5000pc. And yes, that sounds ridiculous, but it really is an apt way to describe it.