New Zealand

After leaving Sydney we cruised for 3 days across the Pacific Ocean, Tasman Sea and the Southern Ocean and through Cook Strait, which is between the two islands that make up the county of New Zealand, which are called North Island and South Island.  Our first Port in New Zealand is in the town of Wellington.  For two of those nights we had to turn our clocks back 1 hour each night, so back 2 hours.

A few facts about New Zealand: The total distance from Sydney Australia to Wellington New Zealand 1386 miles (1630 Nautical miles).  The People of New Zealand are called ’Kiwi’s”. Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, and the southernmost capital in the World, however the most populated city in New Zealand is Auckland, which we all have heard of Auckland Air Force Base. Right?  The sheep in New Zealand out number people ten to one.  The population of New Zealand is 4 million people. Because of its remoteness it was the last land to be inhabited by humans. The majority of  New Zealand's population is of European descent, and the largest Minority is of indigenous Maori culture. The official languages is English and Maori.

Wellington, New Zealand
Visitors often think of Wellington as being similar to San Francisco for its many hills, cable cars and narrow streets lined with Victorian homes.  In this port we chose to ‘walk’ from the ship to town, since our cruise director said it was a 15-20 minute walk..  Haha.  Once we got into the town we walked uphill from city center to get  tickets for the cable car, and had to stand in a HUGE line to get tickets and a huge line to get on the cable car.  The cable car ride is short, only 5 minutes to the top, and it travels thru 2 tunnels that have continuous laser light shows. It was fantastic.

The view of Wellington Harbor from the lookout at the top was the most spectacular.

Entrance to Zealandia

 Once we got off the cable car we had a choice to go to the Botanic Gardens along the way down to town a leisurely ‘walk’ down leisurely back into town, a 25 minute walk, or take a five minute free shuttle to Zealandia Wildlife and Nature Reserve.  We chose however to go to ‘Zealandia’.

  It truly is an amazing place, it is a protected natural area where the forest is being restored and predator fences installed to keep animals such as deer, weasel, rats, cats, pigs, rabbits, possums, goats…even as small as mice OUT….basically they don’t want the plants and the forest destroyed.  It is home to a lot of birds, some very rare, frogs and lizards. They have 2 Takahe. It is a large flightless bird that were once thought to be extinct, now just critically endangered.

We were lucky enough to see one.  The two that inhabit this wildlife reserve are pretty old and are somewhat cranky, yet we could get fairly close to them.









The sounds that all the birds make, and the locusts and cicadas can be somewhat  loud at times. Nature at its best for sure. Some of the best songbirds anywhere. We saw a few different kinds of lizards. One lizard had colored beads pierced on the top of its head.

That is a tag in which different colored beads can be added that have certain meaning so they can track and monitor the lizard, like where it goes, how many offspring it has, etc..

There were many trails to walk.

Some were pretty steep, and the directional signs that were posted weren’t very precise, so because we guessed which trails would be the best to take, we actually we spent a lot more time in there than we intended.

Sure was beautiful foliage in this park. In the end we were just trying to find our way out…and we almost didn’t make it before they closed… We would have missed that shuttle to get us back to the cable car, and our long walk back to the ship. We hustled! Then hustled some more!! Since then we realized there was a great Maori museum in this city that we could have gone to, would have enjoyed more.

Akoroa, New Zealand
Our next two ports will be on the South Island of New Zealand. Our ship was not able to actually dock in Akaroa, we had to be ’tendered’ in. The weather has turned, it is much cooler and the sea is rough, so even being tendered in to Akaroa took twice as long because of the sea.  If it wasn’t for the weather this would be a stunning waterfront view of Akaroa.

Akaroa in the Maori language means ’Long Harbor’. Akaroa is the only French colonial settlement in the country of New Zealand. The waters surrounding Akaroa is home to the rarest and smallest marine dolphin, the Hector dolphin, found only in New Zealand, which we were fortunate to view while standing on the deck of the ship. They do look small from the ship, I guess they are about 4 ft long.  Cinema history was made in Akaroa Australia when  “Lord of the Rings’ was filmed in the mountains of Akaroa…This mountain location served as  ‘Edoras’ the fortress city of the Rohan people in that movie.  They call it Middle Earth.


As we boarded our tour bus, for our excursion to Christchurch New Zealand and the countryside of Akaroa. the tour guide announced that an earthquake occurred this morning before our arrival at 3:45 am, that was a 4.7. In this port of Akaroa we chose a tour that took us on a 1 ½ hour drive to Christchurch, New Zealand, and the countryside around Akaroa, where we also visited a working sheep farm. The city of Christchurch is a city rebuilding from the devastating 6.3 earthquake in 2011. Bridges and many buildings in Christchurch are still being repaired and restored from the earthquake damage.

An assortment of chairs all painted white, honoring the victims of the earthquake at the memorial.

We passed a memorial site at an intersection in downtown Christchurch with 185 white chairs lined up in rows, representing those killed in the earthquake. Thousands were injured. These chairs were of different kinds, shapes and sizes.

   We stopped at the Christchurch Museum/Visitor center, where we toured the museum and the gardens.

 After leaving Christchurch on our way back to the port, we stopped by a ’working’ sheep farm with hundreds of sheep. Some already sheared, some needing to be sheared. It was a beautiful area with hills covered with sheep.

There are many sheep farms in this area. The owner did a sheep dog demonstration, which was amazing.  One dog is whistle trained, and another dog trained by voice calls. When signaled the first dog took off like a streak upon that hill and separated the sheep to herd down the hill. Those dogs, when doing their herding duties, do not take their eyes off those sheep for a split second!  

Then we walked into the shearing barn, where he did sheep shearing demonstration, using 2 sheep. The wool is bagged, and sold at auction. Apparently there are a lot of auctions in and around Christchurch.

After just one sheared sheep...a lot of wool for one sheep for sure.

Gene standing next to a bag of wool ready for auction. (several bags full) not really sure how many sheeps' wool fits into one of these bags.

Our whole bus group was then invited into their home, by the wife where we were served warm ‘lamb’ sausage rolls,  cookies and tea. The name of the sheep farm was Manderley, the owners have lived and farmed there for over 40 years.

The people here in New Zealand have ‘morning tea’. So on many of our tours we’ve been served tea. On the drive from the farm to the ship we spotted some strange but amazing apartments, they are Silo Apartments. They look like grain silos on stilts. There are pretty unique.

Dunedin, New Zealand
Dunedin was our 3rd port in New Zealand. In this port we bought tickets from the ship for the shuttle bus into the city center, which they call the ‘Octagon‘.

Some Facts about Dunedin:
It is New Zealand’s oldest city. Population of Dunedin is 123,000. It holds claim to the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street and the
 famous Cadbury chocolate factory. There are many very beautiful, old churches surrounding the city center.

Just one of many gorgeous churches in town.

Then there's Baldwin Street. The steepest street in the world...according to Guiness Book of World Records.

Not my photo, but one that shows how steep it is...

This photo shows the steps that takes you to the bottom of Baldwin street should you want to climb it, we did not even attempt it!!

It is surfaced in concrete, not asphalt, because it would flow down the sloped road on warm days.  One of the annual events held on that street is the Jaffa Race, at the annual Cadbury Chocolate Carnival, where 30,000 giant Jaffas, (hard orange candies with a chocolate center, similiar to our M & M's) are rolled down that street. Each Jaffa is numbered and then rolled down the hill, at the bottom of Baldwin street, the Jaffas are funneled into the finishing chute, to decide the winners. 

Another beautiful old church

 We decided to start our day off by walking to the Cadbury chocolate factory. We were part of the very first tour of the day, which was nice, our tour group was small compared to tours after ours. after.

We took the guided tour through this very large manufacturing facility. We weren’t allowed to watch the actual process, or take any pictures, but there were videos at different stations throughout the plant, and a demonstration of mixing and cooling of the chocolate to get it to the exact temperature where it makes the smoothest and delicate of chocolate, of course on a small scale, nothing compared to what happens inside the plant itself.  All the employees and tour guides wear purple overalls. In Colorado, the only Cadbury product we are familiar with is the ‘Cadbury Egg’ which is popular around Easter time. Here in Australia it’s a much bigger company than that.  A Kiwi (New Zealand) favorite is the Jaffa, a chocolate ball covered with an orange shell. Similiar to our M & M's. There was even a room where you could help yourself to your own liquid chocolate, a machine that had different spikots for the 3 different kinds of chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate and it worked like a dairy queen machine would. The warm chocolate comes out shiny and smells so good. Then there is a few different kinds of sprinkles to top off your chocolate…Gene and I both chose coconut. MMMMM …what a breakfast!! There are two huge silos on the property, one painted white (the one they are using to store the chocolate crumb which is the product created to which all their chocolate making starts) we could not enter, and the old purple silo, that is no longer in use, but it houses the tallest chocolate waterfall in the world. Which we did enter. It splatters chocolate on the stairs and railings. Our tour guide had started our tour by giving each of us a plastic bag to collect a few of the many different kinds of candy samples they gave us throughout the tour, it was like trick or treat. So much of their candy is different flavors of marshmallow centers covered in chocolate. We took the samples back to the ship, but still haven’t finished eating them. ICK! They are way, way, way to sweet. Well, that chocolate we sampled should spike our energy to get us up to the Otage Museum, about 2 miles uphill, WALKING!!!

Biggest chocolate Easter Bunny ever!

The walk was long and hard uphill to the Otaga museum. It was interesting. It is known to have the best collection of  ancient Southern Maori artifacts in existence. We’ve learned a lot about the Maori people that inhabited early New Zealand during our entire trip. Quite amazing.

There was also a Sir Edmund Hillary Collection with some of the his items that were donated from the Hillary family: his camera, a mug, and passport from his first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. However we missed that portion of the museum.

Exhausted, but we did finally make it back to the Octagon, city center, to catch the shuttle bus back to the ship. Very good day indeed. We'll let the motion of the ocean rock us to sleep tonight for sure.



New Zealand Fiords 

We spent the next day in New Zealand waters cruising through  Fiordlands, one of New Zealands National Parks. It is the largest of the 14 National Parks in New Zealand.

There were 3 sounds, 'Dusky Sound',  and 'Doubtful Sound', and 'Milford Sound'. The first two are officially Sounds, which our ship cruised through and out of, the 'Milford' Sound was actually the only Fiord, one we had to turn around in and cruise back out of. And the most spectacular.
Our captain actually turned the entire ship around in this narrow canyon for all onboard to see Sutherland Falls, New Zealand's tallest waterfall. What was amazing to me, because we so close to both sides of this fiord, is the plants and ferns hugging the steep rock face

Can you see how wet the rock and ferns are?

just glistening with water trickling over the face of the rock, but lots of water rolling down thru the ferns.

 Wonderful! The views of the many waterfalls was some of the best we've ever seen cascading down any Fiord, including those we've seen in Alaska. The falls have a massive amount of water just after it rains. It hasn't rained for awhile, but when it does the water flows hard and fast, but it doesn't last long. It was cold and very windy in that fiord.

See the waterfall to Gene's right? The ship was past it at this point.

 The only wildlife we saw in the fiords were some baby fur seals, sunning themselves on a large boulder on the waters edge. And at dinner that night as we were cruising out of the fiord, since our dining table is next to a window, we saw a Minke whale, near the ship. There are many different kinds of whales found in the fiords, and also penguins. (which we didn't see any)

Sutherland Falls with a little bit of a rainbow near it.

Now we're leaving New Zealand on our way back to Australia. Cruising for 2 days, and gaining back the hours we lost going to New Zealand. By the time we get to Perth Australia, we'll have gained a total of 5 hours.  Next port, Melbourne Australia.

Saved the best picture for last. Gene says this is my rendition of the 'Donald Trump' hairdo!!!!

What do ya' think? Donald Trump type of 'Do'????