NOME, Alaska β The giant luxury cruise liner was anchored just off Nome, too hulking to use the Bering Sea communityβs docks on its inaugural visit.
Instead, its more than 900 passengers piled into small transport boats and motored to shore, where they snapped photos of wild musk oxen, lifted glasses in the townβs colorful bars and nibbled blueberry pie while admiring Alaska Native dancers at Nomeβs summer celebration.
The Crystal Serenityβs visit to Alaskaβs western coast is historic.
At nearly three football fields long and 13 stories tall, the cruise ship is the largest ever to traverse the Northwest Passage, where its well-heeled guests glimpsed polar bears, kayaked along Canadaβs north shore, landed on pristine beaches and hiked where few have stepped.
Some remote villages along the way are seeing dollar signs, while environmentalists are seeing doom. They say the voyage represents global warming and manβs destruction of the Earth.
The terrible irony with the Crystal Serenityβs voyage is that itβs taking place only because of climate change and the melting Arctic, said Michael Byers, a professor in the political science department at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The Northwest Passage, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, has long been choked off by ice.
But melting brought on by climate change is allowing passengers to cruise up the Bering Strait and then head east toward Greenland over the Arctic Ocean before docking in New York City.
βAnd yet, by actually taking advantage of climate change, itβs contributing to the problem because the ship has a very large carbon footprint of its own,β Byers said.
The cruise ship left Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula Aug. 16 with about 900 guests and 600 crewmembers on board. During its monthlong journey to New York, it visited towns and villages in western and northern Alaska, Canada, Greenland and the eastern seaboard.
Smaller cruise ships, those that hold about 200 people, routinely make a port call in Nome and continue through the passage, but this ship is different.
βThis is the game-changer,β Nome Mayor Richard Beneville said. βThis is the one thatβs on everyoneβs lips.β
Nome spared nothing to make sure tourists off the high-end cruise liner β tickets costs more than $20,000 per person, with a penthouse starting at about six times that β felt at home.
The guests came to town in waves so they didnβt overwhelm the available services in Nome, population about 3,800.
They arrived at the small harbor dock and loaded into vans or school buses for their adventures, which included getting a gander at a herd of wild musk oxen that had taken up residence just outside town.
Other activities were hiking and birding tours and helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft flights. Organizers even rescheduled the annual Blueberry Festival so visitors could enjoy a $5 piece of pie while watching traditional Eskimo dancers or browsing tables of seal skin gloves and wallets made by Alaska Native artists. The event took place a block from where the worldβs most famous sled-dog race, the Iditarod, ends every March.
βBeing at this festival here, the indigenous families that are here, I mean they are so proud of what they have, their handcrafts, their dancing, their music.
βThey just love it, even with the hardships they have to endure, the prices they have to endure,β said Floridian Bob Lentz, who was traveling with his wife, Linda.
Charlie and Joan Davis of San Francisco signed up for the cruise within the first hour it was offered three years ago.
βWeβve been around the world many times, and this is someplace weβve never been to, thatβs somewhat unknown,β Charlie Davis said. βYou know, just an adventure.β
They werenβt alone in wanting to be part of the historic cruise.
βThis is the longest single cruise we have ever made, and it is the most expensive cruise weβve ever made because itβs many days, and itβs very expensive to operate up here,β said the shipβs captain, Birger Vorland.
βAnd itβs the one that sold out the fastest; 48 hours, it was basically gone.β
This cruise was three years in the making, and just about everything is unique to the trip, said John Stoll, a Crystal vice president who organized it.
The Serenity was fitted with special equipment to operate in the Arctic, including an ice-navigation satellite system. Its operators even chartered cargo flights to northern communities to gather fresh perishables for the vesselβs five-star restaurants.
βThe planning and the logistics that has gone into this ship has been nothing short of amazing,β Stoll said.
The cruise company is planning another Alaska-to-New York City voyage next August, catering to travelers like the Lentzes.
βWeβre going off on a wildlife adventure right now, and that, to me, is what itβs all about in our twilight years β kind of experiencing things before crazy humans destroy it,β Bob Lentz said.