Kamchatka, Russia: May the 4th Be With You. Twice!
What a perfect day to get to live twice: Star Wars Day! On a cruise ship crossing the
international dateline, for us that means late-night parties, cakes, balloon drops, and two daily schedules, both for May 4th (not making that up – check out the picture). Even though I’ve been planning this cruise itinerary for months, I didn’t really get the fact that we would do some Groundhog-type time travel and repeat a day of our lives, only with cruise amenities and Star Wars cupcakes.
So what did we do, with our extra day on earth? Same old,
same old (writing, reading, failing to avoid the buffets, attending science presentations). Except early-to-bed Annette tapped her toes at the late-night party and sang ‘I Will Survive!” with all the other celebrating passengers – now that’s different (and quite fun).
And yes I know that the international date line is a totally arbitrary line extending from the North Pole to the South
Pole, and it’s not really real, but hey Star Wars isn’t real either (right?), and lots of us celebrate Star Wars Day anyway, which makes Disney happy. An easy-to-understand explanation of how this weird imaginary line works later, but my recommendation:
Try to take a transpacific cruise; it’s the easiest way to get to ‘see’ the line, since most of it is located in the open ocean.
And it’s a good enough excuse to book a trip, I think – to learn your geography concepts! And hey – don’t just TRY to take a cruise; listen to some advice from Yoda: “Do or do not. There is no try.” So there you go, cruise planners….go ahead and book whatever trip you’re dreaming about right now, Yoda says.
Another reason to book a northern hemisphere transpacific cruise: To see the stunning Kamchatka Peninsula. Granted, you might be disappointed if the weather gods don’t cooperate, but they did for us and we were gob-smacked by the rings of volcanoes encircling the bay in which our ship anchored. Our photos don’t quite capture it; it’s like several Mt. Rainiers and Mt. Hoods blanketed in deep white winter snow, with a blue sparkling harbor in the middle of it all, glorious natural beauty in every direction you look.
People live in the town of Petropavlosk, the oldest city in Eastern Russia, but when I saw all
the frozen volcanic mountain ranges stretching off into the distance, I couldn’t imagine how people managed. But they do. We gamely traipsed after our guide, Irena, on a city tour, and she was honest – there really isn’t much for people to do here. Senior citizens leave when they hit
pension age because of the cold, and young folks leave as soon as they’re old enough because of the boredom, unless they’re here to earn good money fishing.
But WOW – the natural setting took our breath away, and today the area does brisk business in heli-skiing, snowmobiling, and mountain hiking (July and August). Looks like bulking up is popular (saw two Gold Gym franchises in town), and we snuck a peek of traditional life during a baby’s baptism at the local Russian
Orthodox Church. The huge local market was bustling, since almost everything except root crops has to be flown in from outside.
We were both mesmerized by the Volcano Museum, where our lively Russian guide had us lift large volcanic rocks (which turned out to be light – they float, due to their
swiss cheese pumice construction), sift our fingers through coarse-to-fine volcanic sand grains, and glow red all over in
the Volcano Room, as red-hot molten lava slowly crept toward our feet.
And we learned about the history of the area; as remote as it is, Russian President Vladimir Putin visits occasionally because it’s a very important port militarily and economically. A local native Indian tribe
keeps their ancient traditions alive here – they lived here long before the Russians or anyone else arrived. And we found bears, and yes, kitties – I haven’t forgotten about the kitties! Turns out this huge, lynx-like cat breed is very popular in this part of Russia.
We also had a bit of an adventure returning to the ship after our tour when the wind picked up. We stood in line in the shivering cold, and cringed as our tender slammed into
the dock as we waited to depart for the return trip to the ship. The black-hatted Russian
officials didn’t crack a smile during the entire process. But it was worth it – one of the best tours of the entire trip.
And now to that tricky dateline concept. Everyone knows about time zones, and probably knows that the East Coast is three hours ahead of the West Coast in the States (you know this if you watch TV. So everyone knows). But why is this the case?
It starts with the fact that we tell time by the sun. Think of all those ancient sundials that used shadows cast by the sun; when there was no shadow, it was noon and the sun was directly overhead.
But the sun is NOT directly overhead all over the world at exactly the same time. This is because the earth is constantly revolving around the sun, and NOON (the ‘no shadow’ time) is dependent on where you are standing on this spinning planet.
Time zones help solve this problem. The world is divided into 24 time zones, one for each 
hour in a 24-hour day. This guarantees that the sun is directly overhead when it’s noon wherever you are in the world. So when you travel across time zones you add (going East – jump ahead) or subtract (going West – fall back) an hour for each time zone you cross.
But here’s the problem, which the International Dateline solves. If you just keep subtracting or adding hours as you circle the globe, when you get home, you are a full day behind or ahead of the people who just stayed in the same place. So the International Dateline was created to be the time when you need to add or subtract a full day to make up for all the adjustments.
The Celebrity Millennium is travelling east, and we’ve been adding hours for a long time (leaping ahead every night), so when we crossed the international dateline last night we subtracted a full day (yay!) to make up for all the adding.
Now see, that wasn’t so hard now, was it? I admit I left out some details here because I knew I’d lose y’all, so if you’re still confused and have to know, YouTube to the rescue – they have several great. much longer, explanations. FYI I put the tiger picture in the middle of the explanation so you’d stay with me……who can resist tigers?:-)))
So enough about time zones; let’s talk about those tigers, the coolest kitties of alI. I have
several posts to catch up on, but a fun one will be on elephants, monkeys, and tigers…..all of which we encountered earlier in the trip. So stay tuned.
May the 4th be with everyone today, and hopefully you’ll have a good old American barbeque for lunch, like we did – huge burgers, ribs, and of course the Star Wars cupcakes…… Think I’ll just hop back and forth over the International Date Line every day if they keep that up. Thanks for following along, everyone!
