by Posted in: 2012 World Cruise | Cruising | New ZealandTags: |

Today we arrived to Akaroa, New Zealand.  Akaroa is Maori (the native language) for “long harbor”. It is the only French colonial settlement in New Zealand.

The weather threatened rain and there was a chill in the air, but we were hopeful once again to explore another harbor town in New Zealand.

The town was quaint – only 700 or so people call Akaroa home.  Their population swells during the summer months due to the natural beauty in the area and a sandy beach (which is rare in volcanic areas — which is pretty much all of New Zealand!).  The buildings are well preserved and there were many small shops and restaurants.

Click here for Akaroa Picture Gallery.

There is another cruise ship in port with us today, the Dawn Princess, and she carries approximately 2,000 people.  So between our 650 and their 2,000 we made a pretty big impact on this small town.

We had a scheduled excursion with Regent at 1:20 PM on the Fox II, which is a sailboat that will take us around the harbor to see dolphins and possibly penguins and sea birds of different types.  We decided to take the tender ride to shore early and see what else we could do in this small town.

Once on shore we walked around and found a few different types of tours offered, including a double-decker bus ride and different boat trips.  We needed cash so we took a walk to find the ATM machine…which ended up taking about 25 minutes round trip.  This gave us an opportunity to see the town and get a good sense of the community.

Back at the pier, I approached a cab driver and asked how much it would be to take us on a 2-hour overview tour of the area.  We settled on a price and we were off.

The most remarkable thing about this small port is that 1 year ago it basically had no tourism.  Hosting 2,600 people, like today, has changed a lot of lives in the area.   The reason for this change is simple…the Christchurch earthquakes.

Christchurch is the 2nd largest city in New Zealand and they were hit by two major earthquakes in a six-month time frame.  The first, in September 2010, by a magnitude 7.1 and then the knock-out punch came in February 2011 when a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit them again.  Because the city had been significantly undermined by the first quake, the 2nd ended up killing 185 people and inevitably crippled the downtown area.  So much so that cruise ships no longer visit the port of Lyttelton, which is just outside of Christchurch.

So now, cruise ships visit the Akaroa port instead.  There are tours that will take you to Christchurch…but our cruise director advised against it.  Instead we opted for a tour of this area and were driven around some spectacular vistas of the Akaroa harbor area.

Back at port, we watched the Fox II sailboat as it pulled up with another Regent group that had gone out earlier…they looked cold.  The temperature had dropped to the mid-50s and it was still threatening rain.  We opted to pass on the sailboat ride and instead took the tender back to the ship.  We did hear that the sailboat ride was fun.  People saw lots of dolphins swimming at the bow of the boat, and all in all had a good time.

Photography Comments:

Another gray day made for challenging picture taking.  I’m sure this area is spectacular with some sunlight as the golden and green hills give way to crystal blue water all the way to the harbor exit.  But, today the cloud cover required stopping down a bit to keep the clouds from blowing out.  We missed out on the sheep dog training tour but I’ll get some pictures from Sherrie soon and add them.  On our drive-about with Doug the cab driver we had chances to get some nice harbor views and on our walk into town I got a few people shots.  There are more where those came from but no time to grab them.  I used the D700 with 28-300 for most of the shots and the S95 for the shots of M and me taken by someone else.  Here are some of the best of the lot.

 

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by Posted in: 2012 World Cruise | Cruising | New ZealandTags: |

Wellington is the beautiful capital of New Zealand.  It has the distinction of being the Southernmost as well as the most remote capital city in the World.

Our plan today is to take the Highlights of Wellington tour in the morning and see what other things we might want to do later  in the day.

We drove around the city in a motor coach (again, with about 40 other people) and the cheery driver gave us some background information on this sprawling capital city.  We stopped at the Parliament building, drove along the shoreline where we saw houses built so high up on the hillside that they had to have private electric cable cars that they use to get them from their garage up to their homes high on the hill.

Click here for the complete Wellington Photo Gallery.

Next we stopped at the Botanic Garden that included the Lady Norwood Rose Garden.  It is a beautiful area and we had a good time walking through the rose garden and finding specimens that we want to plant in our garden someday!

Dale checked out some kids playing cricket while I went into the greenhouse at the botanical garden.  There were some really beautiful plants and flowers, and best of all, it was toasty warm inside.

Back on the ship for lunch and I sent Dale on a mission – to get a picture of the “colossal squid” at the Te Papa museum – this is the largest known specimen in the world.  Dale was able to see the squid and also took the cable car ride that took him up to the top of the mountain overlooking the city.

Photography Comments:

Wellington tried very hard to make a good photography day, starting out with gray, maybe even threatening skies and ending up with puffy white clouds and some blue showing through, sometimes beautifully!  Some of the most interesting areas were when we were driving on the bus (of course!) but I did the best I could without driving people on the bus crazy (my opinion, you decide if you were on the bus).  Some incredible older houses all around town and beautiful modern office buildings that have great reflectivity.  I took the D700 today with the 28-300 lens.  I also used the Canon S95 for use with others taking pictures of Margaret and me (less complicated and not as heavy).  Even though the weather was better it was still a challenging lighting situation because the clouds were pretty white-out potential most of the day.  I underexposed by 1/3-1 stop most of the day to prevent this and give me a chance if I had to edit in Lightroom.  I got a few good shots but included many more so you can see what we did.  I would have liked to have gotten some more interesting shots of and around the cable car but I the Zealandia shuttle driver was nice enough to drop me off down by the harbor instead of the top of the cable car (I had a round trip ticket), thereby eliminating any shots going down.  Oh well, there’s always next time and I did get one decent shot.  My favorite shot of the day is the one of the clouds reflecting in the ANZ building.

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by Posted in: 2012 World Cruise | Cruising | Food and Wine | New ZealandTags:

Today we are in the city of Picton which is in the Marlborough region, in the heart of New Zealand wine country.  For those of you who know us, we are “into” wine…more than a little.  We enjoy a wine paired dinner most every night!

Click here for the detailed Picton Photo Gallery.

We had another fun time last night (I blame the pink flowers) and are a bit leery about spending the day tasting wine…but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and today it’s wine tasting in the Marlborough region.

New Zealand produces some of the worlds best Sauvignon Blanc wines.  The climate and soil, especially in this region, are perfect for this type of grape.  Also, due to the consistently cooler temperatures, they have a lot of luck growing and making Pinot Noir.

We boarded a coach with 40 other people and set out for three different wineries.  The first, Allan Scott Winery, was a very nice spot and we tasted a bunch of different wines and had a tour of their operation.  We even got to drink some wines right out of the stainless steel casks.  The majority of their Sauvignon Blanc wines age for only 6 weeks before they are bottled.

The next stop was at Hunter’s Wines.  This was a nice property complete with a working art studio.  We did our tasting and got to wander around checking out the artwork and playing with their resident kitty cat.

Last on the list was a visit to Drylands Winery.  By this time we were all getting a little silly and I opted to go into the restaurant area, which was adjacent to the tasting room, to see about getting something to eat.  Even though the restaurant was officially closed, the folks working there agreed to provide us with a small cheese and cracker plate.  The wines, which tended toward the more acidic, definitely tasted better with the cheese!

To top off the tour, our coach stopped at the Makana chocolate shop.  Here we had the opportunity to sample and purchase some of their  homemade chocolates although we found out they ship in the raw ingredients from Ghirardelli’s in San Francisco.  I reminded Dale that Valentine’s Day was just around the corner and that I like dark chocolate covered cherries please!

Back on the ship we were a bit tired from all the wine tasting and we opted to eat en-suite, where our butler, Trevor, delivered our 4-course meal in grand style!

Photography Comments:

Another gray and rainy day in rainy season in New Zealand.  Who would have thought?  I decided to get up early and do a walk-a-bout to town.  The rain let up mostly as I walked the 1/2 mile to town, discovering a flight seeing operation on the waterfront (OK, yes, it sort of has to be there).  As I walked down the dock I noticed a cormorant cleaning himself right off the sidewalk.  Apparently, he sort of lives in that spot and was quite tame.  I filmed him cleaning up after he had caught a few fish in the harbor.  He was pretty hilarious.  Then, he tucked his head in and took a nap, waking up to hang his wings out to dry.  The town was delightful but not quite woken up.  Back on the ship I talked Margaret into going to town again with me to explore.  We found a flea market in a parking lot and met some very interesting characters selling their wares.  After walking about town we came back to join our tour.  From that point on let’s just say I documented where we went on a bus trip today as we tried to avoid getting wet.

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by Posted in: 2012 World Cruise | Cruising | New ZealandTags: |

We had a great time tonight, perhaps a bit too much in fact!  We found out that they do indeed have St. Germain on-board and we trained the bartender on how to make a Pink Flower – 2 parts fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, 2 parts Gin (Tangurey 10 if possible), and 1 part St. Germain Elderflower liqueur.  Served over ice in a coup glass (like a margarita glass) or anything tall and fun!

We sampled some pink flowers with Nick and Sherrie at the Constellation Lounge and enjoyed terrific views as we sailed away from Tauranga.  The ship sailed quite close to Mount Maunganui, which is an extinct volcanic cone, the same “cone” that Dale and I hiked to the top of today!

Click here for the detailed Tauranga Photo Gallery.

This is our 2nd time visiting Tauranga in the past 5 days as this was the last port of call on the Regatta ship.  Given that we’d already visited the major highlights — Kiwi berry farms, thermal pools, geysers and boiling mud pools, we decided today we would take a hike up the “Mount” and see the beautiful view from the top.

The skies were overcast in the morning and the temperature cool, but as we set off for the mile walk to the base, the sun came out and before long we were shedding layers and I was in search of sunscreen.

I discovered that the bag where I keep my first aid kit and other essentials (like sun screen), which I typically store in our backpack, was missing…left back on the ship.  So we contemplated walking back to get it.  Just then a woman walked past with a pack and sticking out was a bottle of sunscreen!  I politely asked if she wouldn’t mind if I “borrowed” some and she graciously squirted a large dose in my palm.  Kiwis are wonderful, friendly and giving people.

So we continued onward – and upward.  The elevation of the Mount is just 750 feet, but it is steep in places and the path meanders around and around on it’s assent to the top.  It was more strenuous than we originally thought, but the comments and the smiles on the faces of the people hiking down made us realize it would be well worth the effort.

Dale discovered, about 10 minutes into our hike, that he’d lost the lens hood from his D700.  He hiked back a bit to see if it was on the ground, but didn’t find it.  We continued on and met a local guy, Graham, who ended up hiking along with us and acted as our guide.   He hikes the Mount once a week to stay in shape and was full of information about the area.

At the top of the Mount we took a break to relax and enjoy the view.  It was spectacular…the best weather we’ve had in a while and a massive view of the whole area.

In the near distance we could see the wreck of the container ship, Rena, that hit a reef this past October and partially sunk about 3 miles off the coast.  Also in the distance, we could see the White Island volcano, spewing steam from it’s cone.  This is a live volcano and, if we’d known sooner, we could have taken a tour there.  They outfit you with a gas mask and hard hat and you get to walk around on the island.  Pretty cool.

Once back in town, we thanked Graham for his time and information and made our way back towards the ship.  Along the way, we kept our eyes open for Dale’s lens hood and unfortunately we didn’t find it.  We did stop in to the police department, but it had not been turned in.

On our walk back to the ship, we saw some municipal workers who had just applied some tape to the black top labeling a parking area.  Dale told them that they did a great job and took a picture of them.  They were pretty happy that we acknowledged their work and as we walked away, I asked them what does “LOG ONLY” mean?  They ship a lot of timber out of this area and I figured it meant that only those trucks carrying logs could park there.  They said it was “LDG ONLY” – short for loading only.  Guess they didn’t do as great a job as we originally thought!

All in all a pretty great day (except for losing the lens hood), we had great weather, a wonderful hike,  a fun time with friends on-board and a beautiful sail away party complete with Pink Flowers!

Photography Comments:

It was nice to have the sun out most of the day with just enough clouds to give the pictures some interest.  I took my D700 with the 28-300 and 17-35 lenses along with the S95.  Before we even got started up the mountain the lens hood on the 28-300 fell off and I couldn’t find it.  That lens hood has never really fit tightly and this was my second one…the first one broke in Maui last  year.  I said good riddance to it and will just make sure I have my UV filter on to protect the lens.  I was especially happy with the postcard pictures of the harbor and beach.  There was still a bit of haze as we got towards mid-day but it was acceptable compared to what we’ve had to work with on this trip so far.  We were headed to dinner at Compass Rose when I looked out and saw the sunset setting up.  Nick, Sherrie and Margaret continued onto dinner while I went up and spent a half hour waiting for the perfect sunset.  And…it  happened!

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by Posted in: 2012 World Cruise | Cruising | New Zealand | Seven Seas VoyagerTags: |

I am pleased to announce that today will be the last packing/unpacking event for us for some time!  Yea!  I can’t wait to get settled into our suite on the Voyager.

This morning, our last in Auckland, proved to be the best weather thus far.  Regent had included in this cruise one night at the hotel, the Gala dinner event, breakfast this morning and a transfer for us and our many, many bags to the ship.  As instructed, we put our bags outside our room at 9:00 am and Dale, who had already been up working on getting the last of the South America books uploaded, went back to the Internet “gaming” store while I finalized things in the room.  Our plan is for me to take care of getting the bags to the ship and Dale, when he is done with the upload, will meet me at the ship.

Click here for the detailed Auckland Day 2 Picture Gallery.

I met with the others in the hotel lobby at 12:00 noon and things were a little disorganized.  No one really seemed to know what to do and I found out I was suppose to go “identify” my bags before they would be put on the bus.  The bags were spread out in multiple storage areas and conference rooms, but luckily I found mine in the first room and proceeded to tug and pull them out and identify them to the people who were loading them onto the bus.

The first bus had already filled up, so we had to wait for the bus to drop off the first group and return for the rest of us.  I decided to go over to the Internet store to let Dale know we would be waiting for the next ½ hour.  He was almost done, but not quite.  I finally got to the ship at 1:15 and boarded without issue.  They told me, on check-in, that the rooms weren’t quite ready yet, but as I left the Constellation theater, they let us know that our rooms were indeed now ready and I went there to drop off my carry on bags.

Dale met up with me about 45 minutes later after walking to the ship.  We met up in the La Veranda restaurant where we had a relaxing lunch including a glass of my favorite cruising Chardonnay….Pouilly-Fuissé!  Looking forward to, but still putting off, the task of unpacking and settling in to our home for the next 69 days.  On our walk to our suite we saw our friends Nick and Sherrie, who we met when we were stranded in Machu Picchu in 2010 when we were cruising around South America on the Mariner.  We’ve stayed in touch with them and were excited when we learned they would be on for 2 of the 4 segments of this cruise.

We made plans to meet for dinner later that night and, as I went to the suite to unpack, Dale got re-accustomed with the layout of the Voyager.  We’ve cruised on this ship twice before and on her sister ship, The Mariner, four times…so it’s pretty familiar to us.  We are excited to be back on board and look forward to the many adventures that await us!  One of the first things we need to do is find out if they have the St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, which is a primary ingredient in our newly-found favorite cocktail, the “pink flower”!

Our butler, Trevor, showed up and introduced himself and explained the services he offers and to make sure that everything was OK.  He seems like a great guy and we’re all settled in our home away from home for the next 69 days!

Photography Comments:

A busy day from the beginning to the end for your loyal photographer.  First, I tried and tried to finish uploading the third SA book but, after getting it all uploaded somehow Blurb didn’t indicate its existence.  Ugh!!!  I managed to get to the ship walking, grabbing some nice building pictures along the way.  But, the real treat of the day was the sunset.  After having drinks in the Observation Lounge, Nick, Sherrie, Margaret and I headed for Compass Rose for dinner.  On the way out I happened to see a totally amazing sunset setting up.  I always carry my trusty S95 in my belt holster holder (a must have!) so I rather rudely told the group that I’d catch up to them later and headed up to Deck 12, which is a walking track that goes completely around the boat.  I was the ONLY one up there and you will see the results were spectacular.  It would have been better to go get my D700 but then I would have missed it and I didn’t realize how good it was going to get.  I got enough to make me happy and then found the group who was having to wait to order until I got there.  But, it was worth it.  The price you pay for being a designated photographer on a blog!

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