01/25/12 Bay of Islands--North Island New Zealand

 Greetings from the Bay of Islands. After 4 days at sea, we’ll be stopping somewhere in New Zealand for the next several days, so there will be more frequent updates. The hillsides around the bay are very green and the most abundant tree appears to be the fern tree. The bay is dotted by many islands, mostly uninhabited, and today the bay is full of sailboats.

We decided it was time for some exercise, so we hiked up Flagstaff hill, which has 360 degree views of the bay.  We then hiked back into Russel via a forest path, lined with fern trees and abuzz with something that sounded like a combination of cicadas and tree frogs. It was a great hike and the foot, which suffered a stress fraction in December, performed well.

We had fish and chips at the Duke of Marlborough Hotel, which has been in business since 1827—the beer wasn’t bad either.  This area is where the first Europeans settled, systematically “bought” Maori land and signed a peace treaty. We didn’t visit any of the Maori sites, having visited them on our last trip here. We wandered around Russell—a quiet, lovely little town. It’s a far cry from the whaling port it was in the 19^th century, when “grog and girls” were the main attractions.

The first 3 pictures show views of the bay. The final picture is from yesterday. There was a medical emergency with one of the ship’s passengers and he had to be evacuated to Auckland. At 6:00 AM yesterday, we were in close enough range that a helicopter could pick up the passenger. The helicopter hovered over the front bow, dropped someone to harness the man and his wife and lift them into the helicopter. It was quite exciting to watch and very impressive—the ship’s and helicopter’s crews performed flawlessly.

Auckland tomorrow.