Its 21 decks of comfort and luxury offered an oasis from the dreary chill with its buffets, spa pools and the daily afternoon “Apres Sea”, a cosy happy hour modelled off ski lodges which included complimentary fuzzy blankets to finish off the cockle-warming job that the hot toddies and steaming cocoa started.
As alluring as it was, I resisted the temptress.
This, my first time in Alaska, may also very well be my last, I reminded myself. I must push myself, even to the brink of discomfort as my toes go numb from too-thin socks, to spend every last minute soaking it in.
That mentality led to minor tension with my travel companion, Dan, who lives within driving distance of Alaska in America’s Pacific Northwest and who found himself understandably more drawn to the ship – so fresh off the production line that Princess ought to have included “new car smell” in the brochure.
Apres Sea, the cosy ski-lodge-inspired happy hour at Good Spirits at Sea aboard the Star Princess cruise ship, offers warm drinks and blankets. Photo / Princess Cruises
Dan believes tourism is best done in moderation, interspersed with plenty of midmorning naps.
Afternoons are often best spent with room service and YouTube clips via our surprisingly reliable internet package, maybe drifting off into a mid-afternoon nap partway through. I, on the other hand, tote around a notebook and a checklist.
Although it’s a holiday for me, too, it’s also a business trip, and the worker bee portion of my brain makes me too anxious about what I might be missing to relax in the truly Lebowski-esque Zen state that Dan seems to command.
With 36 years of history between us since we met at age 12, initially bonding over a shared love of early ‘90s grunge and a knack for disappointing the other friend’s parents with acts of pre-teen idiocy, we’ve grown into very different adults.
We met in the brass section of a middle school concert band in suburban Los Angeles, although the first time we really talked was after he and his mother came to my home, where my desk-job-by-day father operated a side hustle in our garage as a band instrument repairman. Dan hadn’t wanted to practice the tuba, so had taken a ball peen hammer to the instrument, his mother explained through gritted teeth.
“A maniac! An animal! A truly troubled boy,” my father’s inner dialogue would surely have tried to shout as he politely took the job and brought the battered tuba back to life. But I understood the temporary insanity that can occur amid practice fatigue – my own trombone, at that budding stage of my musicianship, sounding more like a moose getting kicked in the gut – and all I could think was, “That’s my kind of badass!”
Posing in the rain at Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Photo / Craig Kapitan
I moved away from California at age 15, but our bond remained. We were pen pals for years until social media made it feel antiquated to do anything other than passively observe others’ lives from afar.
As adults, we’ve managed, despite living in different parts of the world, to meet up usually a few times a decade. Our communications can sometimes go dormant for months or even years, but each time we meet again there’s an instant click – a hard-earned ease that comes through having survived together the peak awkwardness of adolescence.
Together, we’ve experienced hair-raising car crashes, fireworks mishaps that I will never, ever tell my own children about and tandem bicycle tours.
Then there was the time he served as my unpaid wingman, taking photos and interjecting with some of the most pointed questions, when I was a student journalist and interviewed a group of evangelist bodybuilders.
This latest meet-up, decades after I transitioned to professional journalist, was my first chance to repay that debt – asking him to be my wingman for a cruise review onboard a Princess cruise ship.
I got up at 6am and bundled up on our cabin deck to experience the hours-long detour the Star Princess makes to Dawes Glacier during each Alaskan voyage. Dan slept in until five minutes before arrival at the glacier, getting the same photo and the same views on the way out. He wins this round. Photo / Craig Kapitan
Our most recent reunion had been about two years earlier, when I arranged an impromptu flight to the United States after he learned he had stage-four skin cancer.
“I … just love you, man,” I’m pretty sure I blurted while not entirely sober, trying self-consciously and through barely held-back tears to encapsulate our near-lifelong friendship into a single sentence as he prepared to start the first of what would be several experimental immunotherapies – the last of which seems, so far, to have worked.
So as the Star Princess departed Seattle with its signature Love Boat-TV-show-themed horn blast – Dan and I giddily singing along in our best lounge-singer baritones – we felt fortunate to have another idiotic adventure present itself. Just stay out of cruise ship jail – that was our only ground rule.
Except this adventure was highly curated, which cut down on the serendipitous opportunities for stupidity we normally gravitate to, and involved an extended stay in a compact cabin with someone whose daily routines each was no longer familiar with – me missing my wife and children in Auckland and Dan missing his wife and service dog Ranger, who rarely leaves his side even at the hospital.
The 24-hour proximity to each other, with single beds spaced just centimetres apart like Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, also frayed the nerves. It wasn’t an issue when we were teenagers spending the night at each other’s houses, but we’re now both middle-aged men with entirely different comfort tolerances.
Circus-themed Illuminate is one of three shows put on by the Star Princess cruise ship’s on-board theatre troupe. Photo / Princess Cruises
After years of refuelling planes midair over warzones, Dan has dabbled in several careers.He now dedicates his life to training service dogs that help other veterans manage their PTSD. During our trip, he slept with a beautiful hand-stitched quilt that a veterans group had awarded him the day before embarkation, in recognition for his efforts.
Those naps were partially prompted by the massive daily pill routine necessary to keep the cancer at bay. And this was the longest he’d ever spent away from his own service dog, whose pictures he showed to everyone he met – way more, I probably shouldn’t admit, than I showed photos of my children.
Over the course of the week, we managed to add plenty of memories to the bank.
The comedy magic show at the ship’s Spellbound speakeasy bar was a standout on the first night, when we both had full energy and the innocence of livers yet unburdened by days in a row of unlimited cocktails.
Also unexpectedly memorable were the countless trips up to the smoking deck where Dan had a knack for networking with fellow military veterans, while I was allowed into the instant camaraderie as his non-smoking, non-serving plus-one.
And we had no less than two fancy high teas together that were planned on our behalf, perhaps most memorable because they were the last thing our wives would have imagined on a wild boys trip without them.
The Alaskan Hotel and Bar is one of several Juneau venues that participate in a unique fart-themed pub crawl. Photo / Craig Kapitan
But here we were walking the streets of Juneau on our own time, and it wasn’t another high tea we gravitated to. It was crab farts.
We both gazed down at the chalkboard sign advertising the mysterious delicacy outside the entrance to the Alaskan Hotel, which was actually a dimly lit bar. Then we made eye contact, a twinkle in both of our eyes as our maturity level instantly flashed back to our tuba-smashinghalcyon days.
The boat could wait. Rigorous cruise critic journalism could also wait. “We’re doing this,” we both agreed, still no idea what “this” actually entailed.
The crab fart, we realised once inside, was just the name given to a Bailey’s and Kahlua-based shot ingeniously aimed at parting cruise ship passengers – many of whom, like us, already had all-you-can-drink packages aboard the ship – with their money.
It came with an “official fart passport” punchcard for a self-guided pub crawl. There was the bear fart at Griz Bar, duck farts at the Lucky Lady and so on.
The crab fart (which can be made sans Baileys for the lactose intolerant) is the signature shot at The Alaskan, one of five Juneau bars that promote an “official fart passport” self-guided pub crawl. Photo / Craig Kapitan
After a day drinking at three of the five spots, an afternoon nap didn’t sound so bad after all, we were able to concur. These two grumpy old men of the sea were back in sync – all temporary rifts healed by a simple crab fart.
It will come as a surprise to no one that men aren’t always great at talking about their feelings. Masking my own fears behind dark humour, I joked on this trip that Dan owes me a death, teasing that he faked his diagnosis last time so that I’d fly out there and do his chores for him at his dog-training ranch.
Of course, the reality is he has cheated what until very recently would have been a death sentence and I couldn’t be more thankful.
Over dinner one night in the Celestial Dining Room, he turned the tables with an earnest response.
There’s no guarantee how long the regimen of drugs will work, he said. He asked me to speak at his funeral.
There was no pithy, emotion-masking response to that. I’d be honoured, I said quietly.
Princess, known for its Love Boat theme, is equally accommodating for decades-long bromances. Photo / Princess Cruises
It was a talk befitting our actual ages, without falling into the patterns of our past.
As the sun set beautifully over the water, we sipped our drinks contemplating our past, the gift we had of the present and the still hopeful unknown of the future.
I tell him my admittedly sanguine vision. It involves many more years of merry adventures and crab fart toasts.
Just, maybe next time in this fantasy future of mine, our beds are a little farther apart.
DETAILS
Seven-day Inside Passage Alaskan voyage (Seattle roundtrip) on Star Princess.
New Zealand Herald Travel travelled via Princess Cruises.