Sailing on the Sea Princess

Main Activity Deck - Sea Princess

The Sea Princess was the first ship on which we did a tour - 40 days! We went from Sydney, Australia to Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, China, Japan, Guam and back to Sydney.

You can read about that tour here.

This tour began at Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and took us south to our neighbour country, New Zealand.

It's the third time we've been to the "Island of the Great White Cloud" and I always wonder why anyone who lives in NZ would leave. It's a beautiful country.

We traversed the west coast of the islands and then came up the eest coast calling into several ports, the following map shows our travel route.

Unfortunately, it was too rough for us to visit Akaroa and Napier which was a disappointment, however, as the ship's captain said, it's better not to push the margin of safety with so many people on board.

This trip was during the Australian school holidays and included New Year's Eve. There were numerous children on board and a much young group of adults - their parents and other adults apparently taking advantage of the Christmas-New Year slow down and holiday break.

As we had been on a number of previous cruises, we didn't get involved in many of the on-board activities - been there, done them. Christina did attend regular Knitters and Knatters Group meetings and we attended several excellent evening shows we had not seen before. One of the comedians was spectacular.

I caught up on a stack of reading I had stored for the occasion and of course, on those places we visited, we got off the ship and had a good wander around, even though we had seen them before. At Auckland we visited the Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life attraction where we met some interesting creatures like this pufferfish which eyed me off as I took its photo.

I can see you Robin !

Initially I thought it was ugly (who am I to talk?), but ultimately I realised what a beautiful piece of work it was. Only evolution could produce such an odd creature with antennae to perform whatever function they perform. (Anyone help here?)

Probably the highlight of the trip was doing a cruise along Milford Sound. We'd visited previously by bus, but the tour in and out covered all of the Sound and we had a good look at the dozens of waterfalls running down steep rock walls into the lake below.

Milford Sound from Sea Princess

I have a large number of photos of Milford Sound all of which are pretty similar - steep Sound walls, plenty of greenery and billions of Litres of running water that would probably be among the purest on our planet.

We thoroughly enjoyed our trip around New Zealand and meeting the inhabitants was also enjoyable as they are inevitably friendly and appreciate those of us from "over the ditch" visiting.

Robin

White-water Rafting - A New Experience

White-water rafting is something we've seen on television, but never dreamed we'd be doing. 

While at Turangi we heard about the water rafting opportunity through an employee who attended an information session at our timeshare resort. We decided to try it out.

You can't afford to attend every attraction in an area, but the idea of water and a lovely river appealed to us.

Both Christina and I have had extensive canoeing experience at Mount Isa and the Gregory River a couple of hundred kilometres from The Isa.  We'd canoed in small rapids and large lagoons and were fairly adept at keeping the canoe upright and heading in the direction we wanted ... most of the time. White-water rafting seemed to be an extension of our existing experience.

A bus from the Tongariro River Rafting company picked us up from our accommodation early morning and we headed off to their workshop. At the workshop we pulled on a full-body wet suit, a pair of rubber boots, flotation vest, and a helmet. We were given a safety induction and then back on the bus to the Tongariro River.

Getting the wet suit on was a challenge. Two of us, one guy who claimed to be an experienced diver, pulled the suits on inside out and had to then pull them off and redress. He was 30 years younger than me and seemed to cope much easier, but just getting dressed gave me a good workout. I was almost stuffed before we started.

At the river we carried the raft to the waters edge, hopped in and off we went for a three hour trip down the Tongariro. It was fantastic.

Half way we pulled up at a large rock ledge jutting out from the river and were invited to jump into the water. Being a strong swimmer and not having been into a river for a few years, Robin decided to take the jump. Not only was the water wet, it was absolutely freezing.

We got back into the raft and completed our journey.

Back at the workshop, the team provided us with a great lunch of sandwiches with meat and salad which was most welcome after having burnt up so many calories paddling.

We both enjoyed the experience immensely. It was a professional operation done very well by a dedicated team. I think it cost us about $100 per head ... money well spent.

If you ever get to Turangi, you must try the white-water rafting experience. Trust me, you'll love it.

Robin

Where in Hell is Cape Reinga Light House?

500+ years old kauri tree

At Cape Reinga of course, right at the most northern tip of the North Island of New Zealand. And, we've been there! Hoorah!

It's a 400 km odd round trip from Paihia where we were staying at the Paihia Lodge Resort to Cape Reinga, so we decided to let someone else do the driving and signed up for a bus tour which began at the unholy hour of 7:15 am which meant we had to get out of bed at 6:30 am ... not all that impressed.

Our bus driver picked us up at our resort and away we drove with about 30 other tourists, even an older couple (yes, older than us) who are New Zealanders.

We drove for an hour to the Ancient Kauri Kingdom site with restaurant, kauri carving shop and something the driver called "fuddy duddly" which to New Zealanders apparently means toilets. Here we, yes, you guessed it, visited the fuddy duddly and picked up a cup of coffee for breakfast. We spent 20 minutes looking at the carvings which included a vertical staircase carved by chain saw out of a 3 metre kauri log.

When I see these things I am always amazed at what skills people have; to conceptualise a vertical , helical staircase and then cut it as well as it was takes real skill ... or perhaps a lot of trees.

From there, we drove farther north and after travelling 20 km or so through a forestry plantation of beautiful pine trees (there are literally millions here), we entered 90 Mile Beach. After a short delay with some tourists in a camper van who had become bogged getting off the beach, we drove onto the beach and headed north again. It reminded me of Frasers Island off the Queensland Coast. Flat and straight.

Our bus

The driver told us that going up the beach cut 25 minutes off the journey and that it was possible to travel at the max allowable 100 km/hr, which he did, driving through numerous areas of fresh water flowing from the nearby hills into the Tasman Sea to our left. We stopped for a short while at a spot along the beach and although the driver offered sufficient time for anyone wanting to swim, the opportunity, nobody braved the cold waters, even the young and hardy.

But, the young and hardy and a couple of older people did brave the sand dune boarding a few kilometres farther up the beach and into the hills. We declined. The thought of having sand in our clothes for another few hours didn't appeal, although I had given it serious thought with a view to retaining my Putin like "action man" image after white water rafting at Turangi. Not today.

Cape Reinga Lighthouse

Next stop was at Cape Reinga where we debussed and walked a couple of kilometres down a declining walkway to reach the light house. After taking a few snaps and reading the information boards, we walked up the incline which was excellent exercise for our hearts, minds and bodies generally. We've walked 5-8 km per day since arriving in NZ which is excellent for our health and fitness program.

From Cape Reinga, we drove for about 30 minutes to a lovely little cafe/service station where we had lunch that was provided as part of the tour cost. While there, suddenly eight police vehicles and as many police officers arrived and while the driver assured us they weren't after him, one of the officers revealed that they had been doing marihuana raids. This explained the helicopter we had seen near the forestry reserve carrying camera equipment (or perhaps sensing equipment?) hanging 20 metres below. Casting my mind back to the days when I was a police officer, I reminded myself that police have to eat too, they were simply there for lunch.

After a short stop during our return to allow people to attend to their fuddy duddly needs, we continued home along the winding road that runs through numerous small towns, all of which are beautiful as is the rest of New Zealand. At around 5:30 pm we arrived back at the Paihia Lodge ready for a shower, a glass of red and dinner.

Robin

PS: We are yet to visit Cape York Peninsula, the most northern part of Australia.

Mt Hutt Lodge and Region, New Zealand

Mt Hutt is both a mountain and a region. We stayed at Mt Hutt Lodge which is near Rakaia Gorge where a jet boat operates, there is a caravan park and people seem to spend time dipping their fishing lines into the fast flowing, grey-blue waters.

 Sitting with the curtains of our room pulled aside, I can see Mt Hutt in all its majesty standing tall with a line of white snow on top, reminding us that it has been here forever and will be here long after we have gone. Clouds cover all but the top of the mountain and seem to be lingering today as there is little wind.

As I write, I can hear the jet boat powering up with the gutterell sound typical of such engines. Speed has always been an attraction to we bipedal land lovers and I guess it's the speed that attracts people to want to travel aimlessly up and down the river with the boat's hull bumping up and down and the too cool wind blowing through their hair. There doesn't seem to be anything else going for it. At least at an aviation show, you get to smell the aviation fuel and see much more sophisticated maneouvering.

The Lodge is older, as can be seen from the photograph above and consists of both hotel style, short-term rooms and four timeshare apartments that are fully self-contained. Ours is comfortable for two people but has sufficient table, chair and movement space for perhaps four or five.

Yesterday we drove via Arthur's Pass to Springfield. There is a train journey you can take from Christchurch to Greymouth, but it's expensive so we decided to drive so we could see more of the sights and have the freedom to come and go as we pleased, which we did. We stopped at several lookouts, went for a long walk about the Castle Hill rocks (see entrance photo) and had lunch at a quaint cafe at Arthur's Pass with free entertainment from a friendly kea bird that landed on our table and without waiting for an invitation began helping itself to the scraps left on our plates. Chris took some video footage of the kea, which is a mountain parrott only found in the south island of NZ. Unfortunately, it's too large to upload. The photo here of the kea sign below tells a little about them.


Arthur's Pass is spectacular with a viaduct, a concrete, overhead structure on part of the road to safeguard drivers from rock falls, and several lookouts. We'd love to see it in winter full of snow although I don't know that I'd want to be driving on wet roads up and down the pass. Also, I expect there would be many more people here making driving and parking etc a little more hazardous.

Talking of people, I'd like a $10 note for every Recreational Vehicle I've seen ... there are literally thousands of them ... and I haven't seen the lot. It's obviously the way to see NZ; rent an RV and drive all over the place.

The adventure continues.

Robin

The Antarctic Comes to Christchurch, NZ

Hagglund Vehicle and Trailer

The next best thing to a trip to the Antarctic is a visit to the International Antarctic Centre at Christchurch, New Zealand. The Centre is situated next door to buildings that house the staff that work for the New Zealand Government's Antarctic program and strategically positioned near the Christchurch Airport from where field staffs in Antarctica are resupplied.

Unfortunately, costs and time determine that you can never see everything you want when you visit another country or, for that matter, another city within your own country.

One of the places on our "preferred visits list" during our holiday in New Zealand was the Antarctic Centre which we had read about previously. So, we set off from our time share accommodation at Mt Hutt and arrived at the Antarctic Centre shortly after opening time.

Christina at a static display

It was a pleasant day and we decided as we'd probably never get to Christchurch again, we'd buy the ticket that included everything. We received a senior's discount too, which made it quite less expensive.

After touring the static displays and reading about New Zealand's Antarctic history, we visited a penguin nursery and a pool where we could see numerous penguins while they were being fed. Several were disabled in some way eg, one had a wing/fin that'd didn't articulate as it should and had difficulty not swimming in circles.

Probably the best event of our visit was the Hagglund vehicle ride which bumped along on its steel and rubber tracks, went up and over a few steep hills and through a deep pool of water. Grandson Tory would have loved it. We loved it!

Robin has an Antarctic freeze

Another event allows those silly enough to experience very low minus temperatures as in a windstorm in Antarctica. We were silly enough and it reminded us that some of our friends in Canada live in places where it gets just as cold. And they have to shovel snow from their driveway every day.

We were provided with thick overcoats and rubber booties and walked into what was really a deep freezer with several huge fans designed to rain down truck loads of snow at high speed.

Yes, it was cold ... very cold, but we weren't in the freezer long enough for the cold to really soak in. Both of us were wearing jeans and a shirt with a light pullover, so I've no doubt we would have become unbearably cold within 20 minutes or so.

As would be expected, the Centre has a nice little coffee shop where we finished up with a nice hot coffee and cake. We also bought a waterproof jacket each and then headed back to Mt Hutt having had another lovely day in New Zealand.

Robin

PS: This post has been posted well after the visit date, but to maintain blog order, I've changed to post date to ensure proper ordering

Wanaka's The Puzzling World

It's certainly puzzling ...

After a few days at Queenstown, we headed for Wanaka which is only a short hop from Queenstown. As would be expected, the sights are similar and the lake large and beautiful as the photo of part of Wanaka from the town lookout suggests.

Here, we attended a social get-together for timeshare guests where we had sausages in bread and coffee etc for lunch and chatted with our fellow travellers, most of whom were New Zealanders from the north visiting the south island. The barbecue setting is underneath a glorious old tree in an idyllic setting as shown in another photo I just had to take that also shows a water wheel in the foreground.

NZ has plenty of opportunities to get outdoors, despite the cold, and walk, so we have done a fair bit of that walking around the edge of the lake and within the nearby national park area. We also had a 45 minute game of tennis which got the pulse moving, which was part of our plan, to get some exercise while on holidays.

Most interesting was Wanaka's The Puzzling World which is designed to challenge your spatial, abstract and conceptual skills through working a variety of puzzles and entering rooms that are built at an angle sufficient to challenge your balance and perception. Very interesting indeed. I fiddled with a wooden, four piece puzzle for maybe 20 minutes managing to form two of the four shapes possible and then lost interest. It's demeaning to be beaten by a few pieces of wood!

Christina and I entered the reality-changing building which initially was like walking up a ramp while fighting against our old friend and foe, gravity. In this building, water appears to run uphill, a chair ride takes one uphill on its own accord when you press the release button, and various things you see aren't really what you see. As one of the great philosophers suggested, "we should be more interested in not what we see, but why we see it."

A couple of additional photos from the Puzzling House show part of the experience. The first is Robin with his arms through two nuts that look flat until photographed. The second is the water running uphill. 

Enjoy.

Robin

Our Tour to Milford Sound, New Zealand

Milford Sound ... Visiting by Bus

Milford Sound isn't that far from Queenstown as the crow flies, but it's a 12 hour round trip on the tour we took, departing at a sensible 8:15 am. As fate would have it, our bus driver "Oz" (give me a break) is an Australian turned New Zealander. Apparently, if you are an Aussie, it's fairly easy to get permanent residency in NZ. For some reason, the government likes us and gives us special treatment.

Mountains en-route to Milford Sound

He didn't say why he had transplanted to NZ many years ago, but locals tell is us it's a great escape from child maintenance that may otherwise be payable by men in Australia who don't wish to pay it. I'm not of course casting aspersions at Oz ... he may simply prefer the NZ way of life instead of the Aus way of life. Each to his own, but I'm advised that escaping child maintenance is a common motivation for expat Australians.

As would be expected, the trip to Milford Sound is via mainly winding roads and as it had recently rained, there were streaks of water creating water falls in most of the hills we passed. The driver gave us an ongoing oratory about the history, character and special events etc we passed, but of course by the time we had got to Milford Sound we had forgotten most of them. Information overload, but interesting at the time.

Some of the wild life here is unique. We haven't as yet seen a genuine, non-plastic kiwi, but hope to do so before the end of our trip. We saw a statue of a Moa, a larger, more imposing version of the emu at Queenstown.

According to one information board I read, the flightless birds of NZ were once capable of flight, but because there are very few ground level predators, they lost the faculty of flight because it was no longer needed. Now, I'm no evolutionary biologist, but that sounds like a lot of codswallop to me.

Evolutionary biology is full of examples of products that didn't quite work out. It seems more likely to me that the creatures grew wings that didn't work. Why would you give up the ability to do something very effective and functional? Everyone who's read Dawkins' books knows that reptiles grew wings to be able to traverse territory better and to do things like move from tree to tree. Present day lizards with large skin folds between their front and rear legs that glide are testimony to a work in progress; long after we have moved on, they will likely have wings.

The most favoured bird here is the Kea, a type of parrot which is large and apparently very friendly and playful (lovingly referred to as clown birds). We saw a couple on the ground while waiting to enter a tunnel on our return to Queenstown from Milford Sound, but unfortunately never got up close and personal to them.

Milford Sound is probably just a little more spectacular than the whole area here. The hills are a bit taller, the lake just as nice, and of course there is a fleet of tourist vessels waiting to take the thousands of tourists, like us, for a two hour cruise up the sound, which is really a fjord.

The slow, two hour trip up and back along the fjord as far as the Tasman Sea is pleasant with plenty of photographic opportunities. A handful of furry seals was lolling about on a rock providing a different sort of photographic opportunity from the rock walls of the escarpment and the dozens of waterfalls. Apparently the first few metres of the lake is fresh water with an underlying salt water base. Makes sense to me.

Having done the 12 hour trip, I don't think I'd bother to do it all again, but now I can say in true New Zealand speak, "bin thire, done thet."

Robin

Visiting New Zealand

Queenstown, obviously one of the best kept secrets

At left are a partial view of Queenstown from the mountain top and of their equivalent to a beach at the edge of the township.

We flew into New Zealand after a three hour, pleasent enough trip from Sydney and the first thing we saw was the huge rugged mountain range. I remember wondering where there would likely be a piece of flat ground sufficient for an aircarft to land. Sure enough, the aircraft turned around and there it was, the Queenstown Airport, neatly tucked away among the suburbs of Queenstown.

Shuttling into the city centre, we arrived at the Nomads Backpackers Lodge after about a 15 minute drive. Our room, an ensuite on the third floor and designed for a person in a wheel chair was larger than we expected and nicely appointed. Even though there are only two of us, it's nice to have enough room to swing a cat just in case one gets the compulsion and opportunity to do so. (I hate cats!)

Queenstown was a surprise. I had expected a lot of old buildings reminiscent of Sydney, but the place looks surprisingly modern and is attractively laid out with nice roads, parks and of course Lake Wakapitu nearby. The lake is very imposing ... huge and fresh water, although surprisingly the Queenstown Golf Course, where the 2014 Golf Open was being held, looked incredibly brownish ... they don't irrigate from the dam. Couldn't believe it, but according to the locals, it usually rains sufficiently not to have to irrigate, but of late, it's been a bit dry. Well, dry for a few weeks, which by NZ standards is a serious drought.

The goods and services tax rate in NZ is apparently 15% which probably partly accounts for the generally higher cost of living than in Australia. Beer and wine seemed expensive as did most other things. If nothing else the exchange rate between the AUD and the NZD was marginally in our favour, but nothing to get too excited about when compared with countries like Vietnam where we can live like kings for almost nothing Australian.

We walked about the city and visited the lookout after a gandola ride. Beautiful views of thel ake and nearby regions. Younger, more keen people bungy jump, fly and ride a luge, which isn't a luge in ice or snow, but a plastic tray with wheels and a steering handle which also acts as a brake. There are different gradients so that the beginners don't wipe themselves out on a hairpin bend.

At the airport a customs official saw "Place of birth: Queenstown" on my passport and said, "Oh, so you were born here?" I replied, "Regrettably no, my Queenstown is in Tasmania and nowhere as beautiful as yours."

Tomorrow is another day and we still have about four weeks to go.

Robin