Capturing the Moment

  We shared an intimate encounter with this brown bear from our kayaks this morning. Another Alaska memory to store away forever. We saw four brown bears this morning while we kayaked around Geographic Harbor in Katmai National Park. I felt like I really put our guests in the perfect positions for all the bear viewing. It is always a great feeling as a guide, when you make good calls on what the wildlife is going to do before it happens. It takes a certain amount of luck, and a lot of experience sure helps too. This morning was a little of both. We started off at the estuary in the back, since we could see a big brown bear there from our boat. I got my kayakers together, gave them a quick talk about kayaking around bears, and listening to my advice out there. Then we paddled in close to watch a bear move around a little deeper in the meadow. As we were watching, people from an anchored private charter boat pulled up in their dinghy, and proceeded to get off on shore and walk right ...

  A brilliant horned puffin, lit up by the mid morning light streaming through one of the sea arches. Today was one of our best days of the entire ten day expedition cruise here in Alaska. We visited one of the Shumagin Islands, called Unga Island, and explored by kayak and on land. We were greeted with early morning fog, so intense that we couldn't see the land on either side of the small bay. Luckily the fog started to lift just as we started launching our kayak group from the back of the Safari Explorer. The water was calm as glass, with no wind and no swell. Perfect for exploring all the nooks and crannies of the shoreline. And the shoreline here is about as wild as it gets. We started off by paddling over to the outer point of Delarof Bay, where we could see a giant sea rock arch that looked perfectly for kayaking through. I caught some photos of the guests as they came through behind me. I like that in some of the photos you can also see the Safari Explorer, far in the backgr...

  Our kayakers and small boats hanging out with thousands of feeding sea birds with whales surfacing in between them. We were offshore from Castle Cape, taking advantage of some unusually calm offshore waters. One of the best parts of expedition cruising, is the amount of flexibility that you have to change the schedule and take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Earlier in the week we spontaneously canceled the evening presentation in order to load up our small boats and go skiffing in the middle of the ocean with fin whales. The sea conditions were so calm, and the whales so plentiful, that we had to take advantage. Today we pulled into a bay that we had never been to before. Its name is Hook Bay, named after a big rocky spit with a big bend in it. Since we have never been here before, my coworker Christian and I took a small boat out in the morning before breakfast to scout out different landings and hiking areas. We found a few places that looked great from ...

  Three Amazing Days in Stockholm, Sweden This was the view looking left out of our hotel. A huge tall ship, with beautiful architecture behind. Stockholm is made up of lots of islands, so naturally there are boats everywhere. What an amazing ending to our whirlwind Scandinavia tour. We finished with three nights in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Stockholm. The Swedish capital escaped all of the destruction that WWII brought to the rest of the European capitol cities. Because of this, so much of the historic architecture, and so many of the old buildings remain. I was shocked to see photo worthy buildings as far as the eye could see, in every single direction. Day 1: Our hotel, another small luxury hotel of the world recipients, was the Lydmar Hotel. You could tell that it was the residence of some lord and lady, now turned into a boutique hotel. It was right across the water from the Royal Palace, and right next to the National Museum. I really felt like I was righ...