Taking the floe boat around Alaska

If Alaska didn't already exist you have the feeling the cruise business might have asked God to invent it. At some time in the recent past, you can imagine cruise operators thinking that what they really needed to do was come up with a cracking seven-night itinerary that offers a delightful summer alternative to their usual Caribbean run. Sitting with their heads buried in atlases, they were desperate for a solution: 'We want something with amazing scenery, stunning wildlife and a colourful history.' Then some unheralded genius poked his thumb into the top left-hard corner of the map and pulled out a plum – Alaska. The 49th state of the United States (it was admitted into the Union on January 3, 1959) is the largest state in the US (twice the size of Texas, the second biggest). It is larger than all but 19 sovereign countries and has a longer coastline than all the other American states combined. Alaska, you can't help feeling, must be one of the great bargains of history. In 1867, when it was bought from the Russian Empire, it cost the US government $7.2 million (£4.46 million) – about two cents per acre. The state may have other claims to fame: this is the place that offered the world Sarah Palin and gave its name to a dessert involving ice cream cooked inside a meringue. But for most people – certainly most British holidaymakers – Alaska has become synonymous with cruising. Actually, it has transcended the mere status of 'cruise destination', and acquired a more substantial honorific – it is on the senior citizens' top ten list of Things To Do Before You Die (given the average age of Alaska cruise fans, this might be more exactly put as Things To Do Just Before You Die). Frank Barrett meets a giant toy moose in Skagway About a million cruise passengers visit Alaska every year, generating more than $1 billion in revenue for the state. Oil may play a substantial part in its economic life but, for most places, tourism is undoubtedly the key factor. The state capital Juneau, for example, which – remarkably – has no road links with the rest of Alaska, is almost wholly dependent on tourism, especially the cruise business. So what you have with Alaska is the perfect circle of commerce: people desperate to visit, and a place just as desperate for them to be there. Everybody gains. And unlike most tourism – which brings in its wake problems of pollution and unsightly development – cruising leaves the lightest of 'footprints' on the environment. Ships visiting the environmentally sensitive national park areas, for example, are strictly controlled by park rangers to minimise the impact on the flora and fauna. The commercial development that cruising has brought sometimes tends towards the crass (tiny towns such as Skagway are almost entirely given over to the sale of bling jewellery). But you don't have to buy, you don't even have to shop – in Skagway there are dozens of more interesting things to do than look at diamonds, or tanzanite (whatever that is). What brings people to Alaska is not the shops but the scenery, the wildlife and the colourful history (largely involving bad behaviour by prospectors during the famous gold rush in the early 1900s). Alaska does all of these so perfectly that half the time you wonder whether you're on a giant Disney ride. All it lacks are animatronic bears who pop out of the undergrowth on cue and sing and dance their way through 'Look for the, bare necessities'. You sit on your cabin balcony, for example, in Glacier Bay and the captain thoughtfully swings the ship around so that people on both sides of the vessel get a grandstand view of the amazing wall of ice. Minutes later, humpback whales pop out of the ocean to flap their flukes and spout their spume. Still reeling from the extraordinary glacier, you barely have the strength to mutter: 'Wow.' I've given up trying to fathom why people think they won't like cruising. The things they seemingly object to – too much organisation and the rigid itinerary – are what make it so attractive. If you want to enjoy the pleasures of Alaska, for example, the only way you're going to reach them (unless you have a fondness for Arctic kayaking) is on a cruise ship. And getting a couple of thousand passengers in and out of glacial fjords and various remote ports of call requires planning on an extraordinary scale. What intrigues me is how many tourist Eldorados similar to Alaska await to be discovered elsewhere in the world. It's hard to think of destinations on a similar scale, in which a million tourists could be introduced without causing environmental, social or economic problems. The Galapagos and the Amazon in South America have a fascinating allure but have much more pronounced environmental issues than Alaska (neither destination would be able to accept the same large-capacity cruise ships). The Antarctic is even more alluring and even more impossible to visit on practical and environmental grounds. The one continent that offers unrealised tourist potential, particularly for cruise passengers, is Africa. Thanks to Somali pirates, East Africa has slipped off the tourist map but possibilities remain in South and West Africa. But nowhere in Africa, with the exception of Cape Town's Table Mountain, has the wow factor of Alaska. For some time to come, therefore, Alaska will offer a remarkable experience for holidaymakers keen to enjoy something that feels life-enhancing and joyous.