February Part 1

It’s been a busy two week of all ports, which I must say, I love!  This post will bring us to the 15^th and the start of our current cruise.

Our first stop was Dunedin, where I was stuck on board as IPM.  Aiden told me I could get off at about one (after I’d napped) but it’s a trek into town and it was not the nicest day out so I declined.

After that, we were in Akaroa, which is our sole tender port.  Alicia was kind enough to offer to cover for me in the library so I got to do a whole day excursion to Christchurch.  Now, as many of you surely remember, Christchurch has been absolutely hammered by earthquakes in the last year – the first one was February 22 of last year and the aftershocks are still hitting them through to the beginning of this year (around 10,000, our guide told us).  It took us an hour and a half to make it into town through beautiful countryside that reminded me a lot of England’s Lake District, where I spent 3 months back in 2007 studying abroad.  Our guide was a piece of work – local and not the most factually knowledgeable guy but his sense of humor was A+ and he had a lot of anecdotes.  We stopped at two gardens near the city center.  The first one – Mona Vale – was absolutely gorgeous with all sorts of water fowl and beautiful roses and other flowers.  This seems to be a bit of a theme in New Zealand.  The second one was interesting – a little less gardeny – but it had a whole big ‘bush’ where they help Kiwis get ready to transition to the wild.  Unfortunately, we only had like 10 minutes there, so we couldn’t really go into the bush.

Then they dropped us off in downtown Christchurch.  Due to the continued earthquakes, a huge portion of Christchurch is not accessible right now, including all of the city center, the arts center and various other buildings.  Their botanical gardens were beautiful, though, and their little Canterbury Museum was very well done.  They offered punting (you know, little boat rides pushed by a pole) but I didn’t realize until too late that they were short and we could have done them.  A friend and I were there together so we totally could have gone for a half hour punt along the little river but for me to go by myself (we’d split by then), it would have cost the same as two people and that was too much.  Either way, I had a good time and felt really good about spending some money there to help with the recovery efforts.  Hopefully the poor locals’ luck will turn around soon and the aftershocks will fade.

I hadn’t meant to do a tour in Picton too, but I’d forgotten to cross my name off after doing the whole day tour in Christchurch.  Fortunately for me, Alicia was again awesome and covered in the morning for me.  I went for a Land & Sea tour – this was our first time in this port and it was a great introduction to the area.  We first did a two hour boat ride in Queen Charlotte’s Sound.  Our guide was amazing and spotted all sorts of things for us to look at.  We went and fed the fish so we saw the small stuff (mullet maybe?) as well as some Blue Cod, a local specialty, which came up from the bottom to eat the bread offerings.  We also saw three species of Shag (known more commonly in the rest of the world as Cormorants) all nesting in the same immediate area, which our guide said was very odd, because each species usually doesn’t like being near the others.  We went seal hunting but since the tide was high, the seal wasn’t at his usual locations.  We did get to see some of the original growth temperate rainforest and the oldest local tree in the whole area up close and personal.  Most of what we saw as far as greenery was recent growth that’s come back after the initial clearing of the land for cattle and sheep.

After two hours, we docked and picked up our bus.  Our bus guide was good but nearly as good as the boat one and we went up around and over the mountains, seeing a bunch of small towns and bays.  We drove past all the New Zealand Marlborough area wineries – I’m sure my dad would have recognized all the names, but I didn’t really.  We also stopped at a beautiful small gardens on the way back for a quick peek and pee break.  The two guides had talked up their local greenlipped mussels so much, I went into town once we got back and went price shopping for them.  They are both delicious and, in fact, quite green – the entire area near the lip is a very vibrant, almost creepily so, green.  I wandered town for a bit more and then headed back to the ship.

I had another adventure in Wellington the next day!  Michael, the solo guitarist and a good friend, and I decided we were going to go find the Weta Caves, which are the public face of Weta Workshop, the company that did almost all of the special effects work for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Weta is technically in Wellington but on the far, far side of town.  We asked the best way to get there and were directed to the local bus system, which was actually quite good.  We took a #2 bus from the train station about 45-50 minutes out to Miramar, Wellington. Our driver seemed a bit grumpy but was kind enough to tell us when we had reached our stop.  I’ll admit, it was smaller than I was expecting, but turned out to be really cool.  The main room was all sorts of fancy, high-scale collectibles and also a little gift shop.  After exploring that for a bit, we went in and saw their 20 minute movie on what projects they’ve worked on and all the different departments of Weta Workshops and what they did.  They had a little mini museum we scouted after that with different props and things from the movies and shows they’ve done (Narnia 1&2, Lord of the Rings, Master & Commander (all the ship miniatures), etc.) with explanations of how and stuff.  I was a little worried Michael would think it was a waste of time, even as a LOTR fan, but he really liked it and was trying to convince another friend of ours to go afterwards, so I guess I did all right!  After that, we took the bus (caught one just on time too!) and went back into town, grabbing a quick meat pie lunch before returning to the ship.

I was IPM in Napier, but it was a terrible day (rainy and very foggy), so I have to admit that I napped it away.  It was rather glorious, to be honest.  After my three days of adventure, I was wiped!

I did nothing special in Tauranga.  I got off after work and headed into town, going and climbing on the one island they have (it’s not a full island either, except maybe at high tide) and discovered that this very wild looking place had actually held first a Marine Park ala SeaWorld and then a resort spa until the 1980s.  After the two businesses went under, they have started to replant the island back to its original format.  There were a few places where you could see it but not for the most part.  I then wandered along the beach again and downloaded a few ebooks on my Kindle using the nice 3G network they have there (and yes, I realize this sounds entirely foreign to a lot of you), but basically I bought books and it was glorious.  I’ve been on a serious reading kick but for very specific types of books, so I got myself some more.

This led to our last day of the cruise, which was a busy sea day.  We had On Deck for the Cure and then Collette, our other youth staff, came up and helped me get through the pile up of books in my absence so I could be done and close at 5pm.  This night, we had a wine & cheese party in Megs’ room, our Event Manager, which was a ton of fun!

Our final port and embark/debark day was in Auckland this cruise, so the next morning we were there bright and early.  I slept in, though, which was nice and happens so rarely!  I tried to get some free wifi but failed miserably and couldn’t do any of the downloading I wanted to.  Basically, my Valentine’s Day was a big fat bust for a lot of reasons I won’t go into here, but I got through it and the next day was a lot better.

Next update coming tomorrow of what’s gone on so far this cruise!  Sorry for the long delay, I just haven’t been online!