Sat July 19, 2025
Hi All! Yes, today is that most glorious of days. My birthday! Thanks for all the millions of my followers who sent me birthday wishes (OK, let’s say maybe 5 people?? Lol). But when I’m traveling with my co-pilot Kathy, it’s always a glorious day!
Today is a sea day in the wonderful remote area of Alaska, so in my book, no better place and way to celebrate your birthday. What a life… Sleeping in, getting educated, eating good food and listening to great live music. I am truly blessed.
Of course we started off with education with the first speaker being our Naturalist, Dr Rachel Cartwright with her topic “The Wild Side of Victoria, British Columbia”. She talked a lot about the Orca or killer whales in this area. It was fascinating to hear that they travel in families, usually in groups of 3, the grandmother, the mother and child. The grandmother Orca is the matriarch of the family just like the elephants.
The male has a very high dorsal fin whereas the females have a smaller fin sort of shaped like a surfboard. The mothers favor their male offspring and bring food to them over the female offspring. They’re the “mama’s boys”! Lol
Orcas communicate with each other with high pitched sounds. There are three Orca types – Resident, Offshore and Transients. Offshore Orcas feed on sharks and actually surgically remove their livers and eat only that since it’s so high in nutrients. They also have some unique learned behaviors: They make kelp tools to “massage” each other! Also there have been over 30 cases where Orcas offer their caught prey to humans and they wait to see the human reaction to it. How cool is that?
The next speaker was Peter Hillary and his topic was “Sir Edmund Hillary – A Son’s Memories of his Father”. It was a very poignant talk about his father and all the amazing things he did. Sir Edmund Hillary was the first man to climb Mount Everest to its peak at 29,000 feet on
May 29, 1953. He also traversed Antarctica to reach the South Pole and he and Peter were the first father and son team to reach both Everest as well as the South Pole of Antarctica.
But his father’s most cherished and lasting legacy is that he built 42 schools and hospitals in the Himalayas near Nepal. He became enamored with the Nepalese people and wanted them to flourish and be successful. But he also suffered tragedy when his wife and daughter died in an airplane crash from Kathmandu to the hospital they were building.
In Jan 2008 at 88 he died but his Family Trust lives on managing over 100 hospitals in the region. His image is on the $5 bill in New Zealand, where he’s from. In referring to his climb to Everest, he was quoted as saying “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” How powerful!
After that we grabbed lunch and then listened to more live music with the Classical guitarist Tom Gamble. Right after he was done they brought afternoon tea so we had to partake since it’s the last one we can do on this voyage since we’ll be out exploring Victoria, BC all day tomorrow.
After tea we went back and started doing a little packing. We then got ready for dinner. I’ll do another update later tonight. Hope everyone’s having a great weekend (and celebrating away for my birthday)!
The Wandering Italian 