Cruising Anchorage to Vancouver, on a Ship Small Enough to Slip Into Alaska’s Quietest Harbors
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- A boutique Alaska cruise aboard Azamara Pursuit trades megaship crowds for intimate ports, slipping into quiet harbors like Klawock where Indigenous hosts share songs, totems and tribal-run excursions.
- From humpbacks and orcas near calving Hubbard Glacier to jet-boat rides past icebergs and remote towns like Haines and Wrangell, the itinerary leans into lesser-traveled, wildlife-rich Alaska.
- Onboard perks—multiple restaurants, cultural theme nights, trivia-fueled camaraderie—and a post-cruise stay in Vancouver with bikes, totem poles and rooftop beehives extend the journey’s sense of discovery.
We’re sitting in a clear plastic “igloo” tent deep in the woods beside the rushing Klawock River, just a few miles outside of the little town of Klawock, listening to a native Alaskan sing us a beautiful song in her Indigenous language. This is a place that has only recently opened up to cruise ship stops, and our sixth port of call on this 11-night Azamara Cruises visit to Alaska, on the cruise company that runs four ships across the globe. My brother and I are on their Pursuit cruise liner heading south from Anchorage to Vancouver via the Inside Passage, along with about 680 guests. Azamara’s ships each hold about 700 guests when full, and are all considered small vessels.
That “small ship” designation was easy to understand at our previous port in Ketchikan, where we saw five massive ships that dwarfed ours in the docks, pouring out thousands of people despite the endless rain that enveloped this town known as “Alaska’s first city.” Those enormous ships hold 2,000 to 4,000 guests (and even more employees) and are too huge to go to most of the places that Azamara takes you.
So let’s go back to Klawock on Prince of Wales Island, where ours is the only ship anchored off the shore near this town of about 750 residents, many of whom are, as Taats, our native Alaskan songstress and guide, explains, “descendants of the Tlingit-Haida-Tsimshian tribes.” She tells us stories of her family, while also showing us her striking clan motifs on her homemade clothes and hat, all while we nibble on locally sourced bites on this bespoke Azamara excursion.
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She adds that the indigenous people here control the port, with only one cruise ship per day allowed and most of the excursions offered to tourists are hosted by tribal members.
Klawock also boasts a fascinating totem pole park overlooking the harbor, with 21 beautiful and distinctively carved wooden totems, each with a specific cultural story to tell. We’re mesmerized by the legends we hear there and when we head back to our ship, we agree that this visit truly made us feel like we were a part of the real Alaska.
Our first days with Azamara included a heartwarming visit to the nonprofit Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center on the way to boarding the Pursuit in Whittier, seeing many of the animals and birds the state is famous for up close. These injured or orphaned creatures are cared for here, in an expansive outdoor sanctuary. We were thrilled to see bears, moose, wolves, elk, bald eagles, reindeer, foxes, wood bison and others at the center and it left us hoping for more wildlife encounters on the journey south.
Stops in Valdez, with its otherworldly mountain fog eventually giving way to sun, and then the Hubbard Glacier followed, on a stunningly gorgeous day got the cruise off to a great start. The Pursuit was the only ship in Disenchantment Bay that day, as humpback whales and orcas glided past and the glacier groaned and calved off huge icebergs six different times. It was glorious and unforgettable.
With more less-traveled stops including Haines, where quirky sculptures and the tiny Hammer Museum caught our attention, to the Icy Strait, with its gondola to a mountaintop with incredible views matched with a VIP outdoor food-and-wine experience, it was clear that this Azamara trip was something special.
Later on in rainy Wrangell, getting up close to the Shakes Glacier in a speedy jet boat and actually bumping into an iceberg, then watching a lone deer swim across the deep Stikine River all got our adrenaline going. But sadly, there were no bear sightings, as all along in these remote Alaskan places in late July the salmon had not made it to spawn in the rivers yet, so the hungry bears weren’t on the riverbanks.
The Azamara Experience Onboard
Opting for a small-ship Alaska trip with Azamara Cruises means more personalized service and options for staterooms that range from large suites to interior cabins. My brother and I shared a Veranda Stateroom, which had a 40 square foot balcony, living space of 175 square feet and a tiny bathroom, which was large enough for us two tall people to be comfortable on the voyage.
Suites on Azamara elevate your travel experience by leaps, with large bathrooms (and even bathtubs in some), plenty of living space and butlers at your beck and call. Booking those also means dining at Prime C Steakhouse or Aqualina Italian, the two specialty restaurants onboard that normally have a $50 upcharge per person.
No matter what cabin level you choose, on Azamara some things are always included, ranging from four restaurant dining choices or room service, plus selected wine, spirits and other beverages, massive brunch events with live music, gratuities, self-service laundry and other special events. Those featured events include the hugely popular White Night onboard party and the AzAmazing Celebration, a special day or evening cultural immersion filled with local performers and tastes. On our cruise, it was an evening lumberjack show in Ketchikan, complete with ax throwing, log rolling and tree climbing.
There’s a beautiful spa with treatments galore, a small swimming pool and hot tubs, exercise classes, afternoon lectures and group gatherings, nightly live entertainment and shows, and our favorite, the late afternoon trivia hour, which we helped turn into a must-do daily event that jammed the ship’s large “Living Room,” while making new friends and arch enemies (the ones who were able to beat our often-victorious team of six eggheads), too, with lots of laughs throughout.
We found very specific dining delights in different spots on the ship, from the exquisite escargots in Discoveries Restaurant to the blackened grouper sandwich in the casual outdoor spot called The Patio and the luscious After 8 Mints chocolate gelato dessert found at the Windows buffet. Every Azamara ship offers a Chef’s Table experience for an extra charge; ours with the award-winning guest chef Daryl Shuter was an eight-course food-and-wine wonder highlighted by Alaskan King Crab en Papillote.
Excursions were easy to book onboard, with most port stops having numerous diverse choices. Think helicoptering to the top of a glacier, rafting through a bald eagle preserve, taking a halibut fishing trip, hiking to a massive waterfall or soaring above it all in a floatplane.
Adding on a Vancouver Visit
Our Azamara Cruise ended in Vancouver, and after 11 days on the water, we weren’t quite ready to head back to Southern California. Instead, we booked into the Fairmont Waterfront, which is just steps from the cruise ship dock. That bustling and luxurious hotel is at water’s edge in the heart of this vibrant city, with incredible harbor views.
To get the most out of our two days in Vancouver, we first borrowed the complimentary bicycles the hotel offers and headed into Stanley Park, to ride the scenic Seawall and find the colorful First Nations Totem Poles collection there. Then we road on to spot Elek Imredy’s Girl in the Wetsuit sculpture on the edge of the harbor and on to the Vancouver Aquarium, to see Bill Reid’s huge and incredible Chief of the Undersea World orca sculpture that greets visitors there.
Back at the Fairmont, we donned beekeeper bonnets and joined a large crowd of adults and kids to take a free tour of the hotel’s apiary, located on the rooftop. Learning about the queen and her subjects, the worker and drone bees, while watching them inside their hive was an unexpected highlight of our stay.
For our second day in Vancouver, we pulled out our trusty multi-city walking app called GPSmyCity and let it lead us on foot across the downtown area, stopping to see the Gastown Steam Clock and many architectural wonders, like the Public Library and the Roundhouse Community Center. Then it was on to Chinatown, where the first Chinese railroad workers settled in the 1880s, to sample some pork baos, peep into the shops and finally, to rest a while in the serene and lovely Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.
Vancouver is a hilly city, so once we tuckered out, we hopped on the SkyTrain metro to get back to the harbor and ended our quick stay with dinner at ARC Restaurant in the hotel, where Chef Harris Sakalis uses the honey from those bees and other locally sourced ingredients to create things like truffle parmesan fries and Dungeness crab bucatini to die for. The hotel has its own Waterfront Gin, too, made with their honey, so if that’s your poison be sure to try their Apiary cocktail. That “garden to glass” quaff put the cap on our wonderful Alaskan and Canadian adventure, and left us wanting to try another small-ship cruise in the near future.
