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We've just arrived in Sydney after our cruise from Auckland. Due to the lack of any decent internet connectivity at sea, I decided just to save posting this until we had some decent wifi/internet, so apologies for the length of this daily diary entry.
Well, we survived the long journey across the southern hemisphere
– Cape Town to Johannesburg, then the long flight to Sydney, followed by a 3
hour hop over to Auckland – all in one day – although moving west to east meant
leaving South Africa on Tuesday morning but not getting in to New Zealand until
the very early hours of Thursday morning local time.
The Cordis Hotel was very nice and we got an upgrade which
gave us access to their top floor Club Room, which turned out to be an excellent
perk and saved us a ton of money too.
We seemed to sleep OK despite the long journey and the huge
time difference and we were ready to go first thing in the morning. An
orientation tour was the plan so we walked down the hill from our hotel to pick
up one of the Hop-on, Hop-off buses. First stop for us was Bastion Point:
Next was Mt. Eden which involved a little bit of a climb
past the long-extinct volcano which was now just a grassy crater:
After completing the two loops (red and blue) on the HoHo
bus, we headed down to the wharf for a spot of lunch at Neptune:
Our HoHo ticket also included a ferry ride over to Devonport
and we wandered round there for a bit before heading back to our hotel. We
stopped on the way for me to buy myself a new backpack from Kathmandu (my old
one was falling apart) and then tackled the fairly steep upward slope back
towards the Cordis.
We had heard there were some drinks and canapes available in
the Club Room so we popped up there to have what we thought was going to be a
quick nibble, only to discover that there was a full meal buffet available –
with unlimited free drinks. Amazing.
For Day 2 in Auckland (Friday) we decided to take the
recommendation of Keith and Annette Gray and take the ferry over to Waiheke
Island for lunch at Cable Bay winery. It’s a real foodie island with lots of
wineries and a few craft breweries but the timing was difficult to complete a
full island tour so we decided to focus on just this one winery plus a walk
there and back:
As luck would have it, this was the opening day of a
month-long sculpture walk. We did the full trail, which added a fair bit to our
walk back to the boat, but the trails were nice and some of the exhibits were
interesting:
It was pretty warm so as soon as we arrived back in the city
we headed for a quayside brewpub before once more tackling the climb back to
our hotel, where we rewarded ourselves with another trip upstairs to the Club
Room.
Saturday 2nd
March
Saturday arrived and excitement mounted as this was the day
to board our cruise ship – the Majestic Princess, the newest in Princess’ fleet,
just launched in 2017. With over 3,500 passengers and 1,500 crew it’s a pretty
big operation and getting everyone plus their luggage on board from a fairly
narrow wharf is a daunting task – and you have to go through full airport style
security – passport checks, bag and body scanning etc.
We made it to our “state room” (as they call them), dumped
our backpacks and decided to take a walk round the boat to orientate ourselves:
For our first evening we chose a fairly simple meal of pasta
and pizza in Alfredo’s. Considering the chaos of boarding earlier, we were
amazed how quiet the restaurant was. We had a lovely window seat:
We then took to the decks again to watch the sun go down:
Sunday 3rd
March
For our first full day on the cruise (Sunday) Jo had chosen an
excursion which involved 2 hours of kayaking out to glow-worm caves and
geo-thermal pools. On re-checking the literature on the eve of the excursion,
we noted that this one was classed as “strenuous”. Oh dear – how would we cope?
The tension mounted when we arrived at Lake Rotoiti and we
were given our instructions and told to don the “skirts” and life jackets. They
were 2-person kayaks with rudders, so I would be doing the steering from the
back seat:
Jo got a little claustrophobic as we entered the narrow
glow-worm cave:
From there we kayaked over to the geo-thermal springs:
Jo wasn’t that keen on the smell or the heat of the water so
opted just to sit in the sun for a while:
In the end, we managed fine, although it reminded me a
little of when we hired a tandem in Breckenridge a few years ago – I knew who
was doing most of the work!
The drive back to the ship in the tour bus went past all the
kiwi fruit farms, which are protected by huge hedges either side of the road:
Monday 4th
March
This was our first full day at sea and we spent most of it
sunning ourselves – and eating and drinking, including attending a wine
tasting. It was also the first of just two formal evenings, so we got dressed
and headed to the Crown Grill, one of the speciality restaurants:
Tuesday 5th
March
After a short overnight journey down the east coast of the
North Island, we turned in to the Cook Strait and arrived at NZ’s capital city,
(windy) Wellington. Apparently the city has a reputation for being one of the
windiest, but we didn’t find it all that bad.
Our first task was to find a café with wifi and attempt to
orientate ourselves and put together a plan of campaign – we weren’t on any organised
tour today, we just did our own thing.
All Wellington tourists head for the cable car to take them
to the top of the hill and the various attractions there, including the Botanic
Gardens – and we were no different. We had the good sense to buy single tickets
as we planned to walk back down, which was the right thing to do as it
transpired. Nice views from the top:
The walk down the hill and through the Botanic Gardens was
nice – and there were some interesting exhibits on show too:
Refreshments were had at the Rose Garden café beside which
was the Peace Flame and waterfall:
The citizens of Hiroshima had gifted a stone from the A-bomb
blast to the city of Wellington:
Our walk eventually took us back to the city where Jo posed
outside the parliament building – the Beehive, as it’s known locally:
A stroll along the lively waterfront and then we decided to
pick up a little bit of one of the advertised trails in the “Craft Beer
Capital”. There are 3 separate trails featuring over 20 brewpubs and bars. For
the truly dedicated, you can get a stamp at each outlet and if you complete any
of the trails you get a free Craft Beer Capital t-shirt and personalised
certificate! We had neither the time nor the liver capacity to qualify for the
t-shirts but we did find two nice brewpubs – Husk (Choice Bros), where we had a
spot of lunch and Fortune Favours which had a nice roof garden.
We returned to the ship in good time and used our Anytime
Dining card and had our evening meal in the lovely Symphony restaurant - or was
it Concerto? Hard to tell – they’re identical but on different decks directly
above/below each other.
Wednesday 6th
March
My 70th birthday – and it hadn’t escaped the
notice of Princess:
I declined their invitations to a champagne reception and to
present my card to the restaurant at night so that I could be “named and
shamed”. One of our fellow diners wasn’t so reticent and was greeted by the
whole restaurant singing Happy Birthday. Lucky escape for me.
This was also the day we docked at Akaroa and joined the
coach to Christchurch, which, 8 years on, still bears the scars of the huge
earthquake that destroyed large parts of the city – and almost 200 of its
citizens.
The port that the cruise ships used to stop at was very
close to the city of Christchurch, but, it too was severely damaged in the
quake of 2011 so all the cruise liners had to find an alternative – and Akaroa
is the nearest workable solution. It’s a very pretty little spot but it doesn’t
have a wharf large enough to berth boats of our size, so we all had to jump in
a series of tenders to take us from the Majestic Princess to shore, which gave
me a fine opportunity to get a nice shot of our ship:
The town of Akoroa itself was founded by the French and
still displays those influences – but, to get from there to Christchurch means
a fairly tortuous drive over the hills – it took about 90 mins to get there.
Again, Jo and I preferred to do our own thing once we got
there – and walk. We badly needed a little leg-stretching, so we again headed
for the park and the Botanical Gardens, following the twisting little Avon river
round. It’s a very Anglified town – the
river even has punts on it:
It didn’t take us long to reach Cathedral Square from the
Botanical Gardens – what a sad sight:
Once we’d done our little tourist walk round the city
centre, it was time for lunch and we managed to find a nice little brewpub,
again with a lovely rooftop bar.
Thursday 7th
March
It was scheduled to be a relatively short overnight hop down
to Port Chalmers for Dunedin, which is the Scots name for Edinburgh. We were
keen to see why everyone who visits it says it’s just like home – well, one
thing at least was similar – coastal haar. It’s a tight little entrance to the
bay and when we arrived in the early hours of Thursday morning, we expected a
pilot boat to lead us in to the port, but it was closed. We knew the haar would
eventually clear, but we also needed a tidal window and, in the end, we
couldn’t match the two up and had to abort the mission. This meant another
unexpected day at sea.
Friday 8th
March
The good news was that the weather behaved itself and we
were able to do the full planned sail through Fjordland National Park – a World
Heritage site. Just the day before when our trip to Dunedin was cancelled, a
sister vessel couldn’t get in to any of the fjords due to the weather, so we
were very lucky in that respect.
We were now at the southernmost point of our trip and we
knew it would be cold – and it was – especially early morning. The scenery was
spectacular and we all marvelled at how our monster ship managed to navigate
through these narrow channels. First of all came Dusky Sound leading out to
Breaksea and the open ocean again:
Next was Doubtful Sound and Thompson Sound:
The last fjord was the famous and spectacular Milford Sound.
By now, it was mid-afternoon and the sun had worked its magic so we were able
to take off a layer or two. There is no exit to Milford Sound so the vessel had
to make a tight turn at the furthest, widest point, where the tall mountains
still had pockets of snow visible:
Saturday 9th
March
Another sea day as we headed out of NZ waters and across to
Tasmania. Captain Dino had warned us in his daily address that there was a deep
low hovering around Tasmania and heading right down our planned route, so he
announced that we would be taking a large detour, heading north west first of
all, then south west, bypassing the worst effects of the storm. There was a bit
of movement in the boat but it was far from severe. Our worst problem was the
clack-clack-clacking of our balcony door overnight, keeping us awake, but we
eventually found a solution to this. The noise appeared to happen when you seal
and lock the door tight. When it’s just closed over, it doesn’t seem to make
the same noises – simples.
Some of the activities we undertook as we strolled round the
ship:
Saturday evening was our second speciality restaurant dinner
– this time in Harmony - high class Chinese food. It was lovely, but we ate too
much – the portions of rice and noodles were enormous and, of course, we
couldn’t resist the offer of another large crème brulee – this one with red
beans, stangely.
Sunday 10th
March
Still at sea steaming towards Tasmania. Various activities
on board, the most vital of which is that we finally finished the jigsaw we had
been working on for 3 days off and on:
Monday 11th
March
Land at last. We awoke berthed at Hobart Harbour and it was
an early start for us as we had another bus journey of 90 minutes to get to our
chosen tour location – Port Arthur, the former penal colony, now another World
Heritage site. The reconstruction of the site began in 1982 and whilst most of
the buildings are either ruins or badly damaged, the huge site is very
impressive. In fact, it now looks and feels like some kind of idyllic holiday
camp – a far cry from what it used to be, as our guide David explained to us at
the start:
It was a beautiful day to spend a few hours just strolling
round the site and taking in some of the stories at the different locations:
On the way there we had made an early morning stop to take
in the scenery of Pirates Bay:
and, on the way back to the ship, we stopped off to view the
tessellated pavement – a natural phenomenon – a bit like the Giant’s Causeway:
We went basic in the evening, dining at World Fresh
Marketplace, where there was a Bavarian themed menu. After dinner we went to
the glitzy piazza for a couple of drinks and to listen to the bands, one of
which was a country group playing line dancing music, with the staff
demonstrating and leading the clientele in a series of structured routines.
Tuesday 12th
March
We’re definitely in Australian waters now, crossing the
apparently notorious Bass Strait, but, yet again, the movement on the boat is
somewhat less than significant.
We had breakfast quite early so decided it was time for Jo
to get her laps in, so we headed for the indoor pool, which was nice and quiet
and we got a little private booth to ourselves where we sat and watched the
ocean and read our books for a few hours.
Dinner was at La Mer - one of the three speciality restaurants we had chosen. The menu was French seafood - and it was lovely:
Wednesday 13th
March
Sydney - end of cruise. We arrived before dawn and we knew we had to vacate our rooms before 8 am. Our luggage had already been taken away the night before so it was just a matter of getting dressed and picking up our backpacks and heading down for breakfast before waiting in line for our scheduled disembarkation at 09:15 am. It was all pretty well organised but the line to get on the lifts to get up to the taxi ranks was huge and we knew we didn't have far to go to our hotel so we ended up just walking.
We're now happily ensconsed in our hotel and looking forward to a steady decline in the quality and quantity of food we've eaten over the last 3 weeks!
