01/30/12 Akaroa

 As the first 2 pictures show, the South Island of New Zealand is spectacular—mountains and cliffs tumbling down into fjord-like bays. It makes you want to put on your hiking boots and head into the hills or, at least, drive through all the little town, along the bays and over the mountains—a Jeep would have been nice today.

Prior to 2011, we would have spent the day in Christchurch, but the earthquake of last February has closed down the port and most of the attractions in that beautiful city. Instead, we spent the day in Akaroa on the Banks peninsula, SE of Christchurch. Akaroa is a town of 500 people and our ship of 450 would make it seemed crowded. But the Sun Princess was here too—all 2000+ passengers. The locals looked forward to our leaving!

We did learn something interesting about earthquakes in NZ. Housing insurance is provided (sold) by the New Zealand government—there are no private housing insurance companies. Therefore, the government is incented to have a very extensive department that studies earthquakes and building to withstand earthquakes. New construction must meet very high standards.

It was a quiet day today. We wandered around town and enjoyed the views from our ship. And even though NZ is an independent country, we enjoyed that latent British way of saying things (3^rd picture). The French were also here and that is reflected in restaurants and street name. Don’t know whether it’s NZ, British or French bad sense of direction in the last picture.

01/29/12 Wellington

 Wellington hasn’t always been the capitol of New Zealand. First it was Russell, where the first Europeans came ashore and signed a treaty with the Maori. But Russell became a bit bawdy (everyone looking for grog and women!), so the capitol was moved to the more civilized Auckland. But the southern island felt that was too far away, so the capitol finally moved to Wellington, which lies at the southern tip of the north island. The south island lies only 14 miles away across the Cook Strait.

Wellington is a hilly city and there are 350 cable cars, public and private, getting people up and down the steep hills. We started our visit at Victoria Peak, the highest point around and captured some great views. The first picture shows the downtown and port area.

 We then had a too brief visit to the Te Papa Museum, New Zealand’s national museum. The full name is Te Papa Tongarewa, which means “the place of this land’s treasures”. It celebrates New Zealand’s bicultural heritage of Maori and non-Maori. It also covers flora and fauna and a host of other exhibits that we didn’t have time to explore.

The second picture is a moa and really tells the story of New Zealand’s animals. There are no native mammals here and originally there were many ground birds. They didn’t need to fly because there were no natural predators. When man arrived, these magnificent birds had a predator. The moa is now extinct. It was the largest bird and, therefore, an excellent food source (ten feet tall, 80 lbs of meat). Given relative size of head to body, you can also see that it wasn’t really Einstein and, therefore, not terribly clever at evading problems. There are still several species of ground birds, the kiwi being the best known, but these too are becoming rarer and rarer.

The most interesting exhibit in the fauna section was the colossal squid. They actually had a preserved baby that became entangled with a very long fishing line that was approximately 20 feet long. Imagine the size of an adult—not an attractive animal. A research boat actually had an adult tangled in a net several miles below the surface, but they didn’t realize what the had and quickly pulled it to the surface. It had the bends and exploded before reaching the surface, so they lost the specimen. Bet that was not a pretty sight!

The third picture is a modern-day Marae, built inside the museum. In a traditional Maori settlement it was where the community gathered. The marae contains elaborate carvings that represent the ancestors. The figure at the apex is Tekoteko, who is holding up the sun. There are too many figures and stories for here, but it is fascinating. This marae is used for official business at the museum and is an active part of the community.

We also had a lunch to die for. The appetizer was crayfish and prawns. The main course was a marvelous New Zealand rack of lamb. And there was berry trifle for dessert. We waddled back to the ship, but somehow managed dinner a little later!!! We’re having too much good food.

01/28/12 Napier

 Greetings from Napier on the North Island of New Zealand.  We’re docked at the main port, with a cargo ship of containers on one side and a Chinese ship waiting to be filled with timber on the other side. The only other ship in port is the Princess Sun two docks over.

The Maori had a fortified settlement here long before Captain Cook landed. By 1839 there was a European settlement here.  But in 1931 a severe earthquake and the subsequent fires literally destroyed the town. Rebuilt following that, the town is a wonderful collection of art deco buildings.

The Napier Rotary Pathway runs along the shore for several miles, with wonderful ocean views (Picture 1) as well as views of the headlands to the south (Picture 2). The beach is flat pebbles (Rick described them as skipping stones) and no one swims here, as there is a vicious riptide. We followed the pathway until we were out of town and then took the street along the path, the Marine Parade, back into town—a relaxing couple of miles.

Along the way we saw a couple of interesting sites. Today was the New Zealand National Scooter Championship in the Skate Park. This involved boys between about 8 and 15 doing some very interesting flips and turns (Picture 3). Then we saw a putt-putt golf course that looked like one of the more basic ones in the US (not the Myrtle Beach variety), but added the novelty of children playing in the water hazards (Picture 4).

We even got a little homesick when we saw a Starbucks and “enjoyed” a bagpipe concert—enjoyable bagpipes does seem a bit of an oxymoron (Picture 5)! We wandered through the downtown, enjoying the art deco architecture and doing a little shopping. It was a lovely afternoon.

Tomorrow Wellington—one of my favorite cities in the world! 

Aarrghh! Networking problems with the ship and Earthlink for the last 18 hours….

The Port of Tauranga is not actually in Tuaranga, but in Mount Maunganui, so we never quite made it to Tauranga, which means “resting place for canoes” in Maori. Since we haven’t mentioned it earlier, the Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, who arrived by canoes from the Cook Islands in the 13^th century. In the grand scheme of things, however, the Maori are just a small piece of the great migration of the Polynesians from around 800 AD from Taiwan throughout the islands of the South Pacific. Note: for those of you far more knowledgeable about this migration, we know there was much disagreement about where the original Polynesians migrated from, but our authority, Scott Pearson from Stanford, who has been giving lectures on the ship, insists it’s Taiwan. Lecture over.

We climbed Mount Maunganui this morning.  It’s only 765 ft. high, but the hike to the top was only about half a mile, so it was respectably steep.  Walking from the ship, up and down the mountain and back to the ship along the beach and through town was about 3 miles. The stress-fractured foot was a little sore, but after a nap, it feels fine. The weather was cloudy in the low 60s and rain was predicted. Fortunately, the rain held off until naptime.

The first picture is the mountain as we sailed away in the ship (the sun finally came out for a good shot). As we walked along a not-very-nice beach on the way to the mountain, with people swimming and paddling surfboards in wet suits, we thought “come on NZ, can’t you give us a better beach than this?” And they delivered, as you can see in the second picture, from the top of the mountain. There was little surf, but a few beginners lying on surfboards were floating in on little waves. We understand, however, that the best surfing beaches in NZ are a little further south.

To incorporate into your little known facts to slip into cocktail party conversation. Tauranga is in the Bay of Plenty and life here revolves around the kiwifruit. This is where the bulk of that fruit is grown and ships from this port.

Half of our shipmates left us in Auckland after 3 weeks and we’re training a group of new shipmates. We’re currently trying to leave port and 3 cabins are missing…. We move on to Napier tomorrow.

01/26/12 Auckland

Greetings from Auckland! Not much to report today—it was a “work” day. We got haircuts, did laundry and shopped for a few necessary things. We took a nice walk down Queen Street, the main shopping street, saw the TV tower, the old Ferry Building and 4 McDonalds on our walk.

Auckland has a population of 1.4 million people—1/4 of the population of New Zealand. As you can see from the picture, the skyline is lovely and the harbor is filled with sailboats, earning it the name of the City of Sails.

More tomorrow from Tauranga.

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.

1/19/12 Rarotonga

3^rd time is a charm. We became the fist Seabourn vessel to successfully tender people into Avarua,  Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands. Not that it was pleasant…. The seas were very rough and some of us were a little green by the time we landed—don’t know why I didn’t take seasick medicine. But we made it to shore and back and were very happy we did—what a great part of the world.

Law says no building can rise above a palm tree and the interior is lush with an amazing number of types of fruit grown. We saw mango, papaya, breadfruit, coconut, watermelon, banana and pineapple. The people are laid back and happy. They have a few flights coming in each day and most arrive at night because the runway is short and they don’t want to scare the drivers passing by the end of the runway on the main road. This road circles the island and is serviced by 2 sets of buses. One says clockwise and the other says counterclockwise on the front and you want to make sure you get on the right one! There is one 9-hole golf course and it is the only golf course in the world that requires you play around 5 TV towers.

Like the other islands we’ve visited, Rarotonga is volcanic and is surrounded by a barrier reef, which creates a shallow lagoon around the island.  As the first picture shows, the island has craggy peaks, covered in lush vegetation. The second picture shows a view of the lagoon and Muri Beach. All beaches are public and you may walk through hotel property and enjoy their beach. Poking around near the shore at the beach, we found little crabs, shrimp-like critters, a few small and not very colorful fish and sea slugs. We have never encountered sea slugs. The ones here were the size of a thick hot dog, although squishier in texture when touched. We’re developing an urge to spend a week on one of these islands, snorkeling our way through different parts of the lagoon each day, eating fresh fish and fruit every day and, probably, swatting away mosquitos the rest of the time!

We go to bed tonight on January 19 and wake up tomorrow on January 21. We’re crossing the dateline.  After 4.5 days at sea, we’ll arrive at Russell, New Zealand at the Bay of Isles. More then….