New Zealand – day 5 (Akaroa, October 22)

Akaroa is another town which has been built on a river a couple of kilometres inland from the sea. This gives it a much more sheltered climate than it would have enjoyed on the coast.
I didn’t find out why there was such a strong French influence in Akaroa, but it was highly evident none the less.
We were in Akaroa 2 days before the Rugby World Cup final game between France and New Zealand. It was slightly humorous to see so many instances of flags and signs that professed support for both the All Blacks (New Zealand’s national rugby team) and the French team.
As our second port of call, Akaroa was gorgeous. There was a beautiful little lighthouse not far from the centre of town which had originally been built out on the coast. In the early 80′s, it had been scheduled for demolition, but a local with a touch of sentimentality had offered the council $1 for it. He was given ownership of the lighthouse, and over the next couple of months, dismantled it, moved it, and reassembled it in the town. These days, a mere $5 will gain you admission upon which you will have your ear chewed off by a couple of old timers who will tell you all about its history. And unlike Lanarch Castle, you are not only allowed but encouraged to take as many photos as you like. My kind of tourist attraction!
We then wandered through the town itself, looking at some of the French-inspired shops and architecture, before heading back to the ship.

Take me to: Day 4 <- | ->Day 6

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New Zealand – day 4 (Dunedin, October 21)

We awoke to find the ship already docked at Port Chalmers, a small town of a couple of thousand people about 15km (10 miles) from Dunedin.
Although Dunedin itself is on the river, it is inaccessible for a ship the size of the Sea Princess. Hence our docking at Port Chalmers.
We disembarked to conditions that seemed typical of an English winter, quite fitting given that the landscape in this part of the country is an almost perfect replica of the mother country.
The temperature was in single figures Celsius (around 45-50F), light rain, and heavily overcast.
Cath had booked us a hire car, but that was waiting for us in Dunedin, not Port Chalmers.
That meant having to flag down a taxi, but we couldn’t really do that until we found ourselves some local currency.
We found an ATM in the main street, pulled out some cash, and hailed a cab.
The cabbie was a friendly bloke who gave us some local insights into what to go and have a look at once we had picked up our car.
After picking up our car, we decided that before we’d head off exploring, we should find a telco from whom we could pick up some pre-paid SIM cards for our phones. Mike Hollman, whom we would eventually hook up with once we got to Auckland, had suggested going with either Telecom NZ or Vodaphone. We found a Telecom store first, but were advised by the helpful young girl there that because of the radio frequencies of our handsets, a Telecom SIM would be no good to us and that we should go with Vodaphone. Wow…. honesty in retail. There’s a novel concept!
So, having acquired our Vodaphone SIM cards, we grabbed a bite of lunch and headed off on our first real bit of New Zealand exploration.
We headed south for about 10km to Lanarch Castle, one of those tourist magnets that was mentioned by every source of tourist info… the ship’s info sheet on Dunedin, by Mike, by the cab driver, by the hire car staff… must be worth a look then.
Again, as you can see from the pictures, this really left you feeling like you had magically teleported to the north of England.
The gardens were beautiful, but the wintery conditions didn’t inspire one to stay and enjoy them quite as much as we might have under sunnier conditions.
And unfortunately, this was one of those tourist attractions that charges an arm and a leg for the privilege of walking through the building, but then denies you the right to video or photograph the interior. Hate that. I skipped Hurst Castle in California because of this, and had I been travelling alone this time, I’d have skipped Lanarch Castle for the same reason. Call me a sceptic, but I don’t buy the “it’s for safety reasons” argument. More like “it’s for profit reasons”.
Anyway, after that, we headed out to the albatross colony which is right at the end of the peninsula along which we were driving.
We got out there and the conditions were even less hospitable than they had been at Lanarch Castle. We could now add 50km/hr winds to the rain, the low cloud cover and the cold. Not being equipped for these almost Antarctic conditions, I grabbed a couple of quick shots to prove that we’d been there, before we all piled back in the car and headed back into Dunedin.
We got back into town and decided that we still had an hour to kill before we needed to hand the hire car back, so we took a drive around Dunedin itself.
This of course had to include a drive past, and a few quick shots of, the Dunedin train station. A building which holds the distinction of the ‘most photographed building on the south island’. Doesn’t take much imagination to see why.
I don’t know how San Fransicans will feel about this, but Dunedin claims to have the steepest street in the world… Baldwin Street. I didn’t shoot any photos of it, but I did shoot some video. When I have edited the video together, I’ll post it on youtube. Unlike San Francisco’s Lombard Street which is a series of hairpin turns, Dunedin’s Baldwin Street is dead straight. I did see a guy drive up it, but unfortunately, I didn’t have the video camera recording at that point in time. He gave it a bootful at the bottom of the hill and managed to make it to the top. I wasn’t prepared to try it! Last thing I needed was to lose traction in the rain and slide out of control in a hire car with a $3000 excess!
We then filled the tank, dropped off the car, and jumped on the bus back to Port Chalmers. Cath and Max headed straight back to the ship, while I headed off on foot around the town to see if there was anything worth shooting.
I had noticed a church up on the hill when we’d disembarked that morning that I was interested in checking out.
What struck me as an unusual choice of artwork was the inverted pentagram stained glass window.
I’m sure there was a reason for such a choice, but Hollywood has certainly portrayed this symbol as being associated with far darker arts than Christianity.
Oh well, that’s one for the theologians to ponder. Me? I’ll just shoot it and move on.
After we cast off from Port Chalmers, we were escorted by the river pilot out to the open water. We had been sailing for about half an hour or so when I happened to look out a window at the failing light and see that we had done a 180 degree turn. I was headed back to the cabin to tell Cath we had turned around when the Captain’s voice came over the PA system again, saying that yes, as some passengers had noticed, the ship had in fact turned around and was heading back toward the river mouth. The reason was that one of the passengers had become ‘critically’ ill (I think I heard somewhere that he’d suffered a heart attack) and needed to be transferred to hospital in Dunedin. As Port Chalmers had no medical facilities of any kind, the passenger had to be moved onto the river pilot’s boat along with the ship’s doctor. The Sea Princess had to then hold steady while the passenger was transferred to Port Chalmers (where an ambulance was now waiting to carry him to Dunedin), and then for our doctor to be ferried back out to the Sea Princess, before we could again head off on our next leg to the very French town of Akaroa.

Take me to: Days 0-3 <- | -> Day 5

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New Zealand – days 0-3 (at sea, October 17-20)

A quick side note before I start: I’m still in the process of documenting the trip, so you may find that the links to the following day (which will appear at the end of each day’s post) may not be active straight away. If that’s the case, it means you’ve caught up to me! OK, here we go…

Cath, Max and I boarded the Sea Princess in Sydney, bound for the Fiordlands National Park at the southern tip of New Zealand’s south island.
And before you crucify me for my spelling, please allow me to quote the Wikipedia article:

Indeed, the name “Fiordland” comes from a variant spelling of the Scandinavian word for this type of steep valley, “fjord”.

The itinerary called for 3 nights and 2 days of cruising (Monday night to Wednesday night inclusive) the open waters of the Tasman Sea, with an arrival at Fiordlands on Thursday morning.
However, as luck and the weather gods would have it, we struck high winds and ‘rough’ seas on our first two days out of Sydney. At lunch time on Wednesday, the Captain announced that because of the conditions we were sailing in, we had not made the kind of speeds the itinerary had anticipated, and as such, we would have to skip the Fiordlands National Park and sail directly on to what was supposed to be our second port of call, Dunedin.
I put ‘rough’ in quotes because I didn’t really think the conditions we were in were rough at all. Maybe I’m just one of the fortunate ones… one of those for whom sea sickness doesn’t kick in until you have to physically keep your hand on your wine glass to stop it from sliding off your table. The gentle rolling of the ship that we were experiencing seemed to me to be the bare minimum of what one should expect when sailing the open ocean. But, be that as it may, the Captain (who probably felt much the same as I did) conceded that these were ‘rough’ conditions and that we couldn’t go any faster.
As a consequence, we didn’t get to sail through Milford Sound and the rest of the Fiordlands National Park…. an area that seasoned sailors consider some of the most picturesque waterways of the southern hemisphere.
While having a chat with one of the deck hands on Wednesday afternoon, he mentioned that about one in three cruises ends up having to skip the FNP because of weather conditions. Great.
Oh well, make that 4 nights and 3 days of open water cruising then. Dunedin, here we come.
As you can see, only one photo from these four days. A really nice ‘Tequila Sunrise’-inspired sunset shot.
About 15 minutes before I took this shot, I said to Cath, “We’re gonna see an amazing sunset tonight. Look at the haze over the water.” And sure enough…

Take me to: -> Day 4

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