3 Days at Sea and Dunedin, NZ

Tuesday 24^th February – 7 weeks today – Day 50 – Halfway through!!

Day 1 of 3 at sea

Wow, halfway through the cruise, halfway round the world and halfway through the toothpaste.

It’s been a sea day today so nothing much to tell; Chris is just jumping through online hoops completing yet another New Zealand passenger declaration form.  It’s frustrating and time consuming for us but I get why they’re doing it; New Zealand is a very safe and progressive country.  I think they were one of the first countries to ban inward flights when COVID hit, many years ago it was the first country to give women the vote and despite there being a ratio of four-sheep-to-each-person they have never had a case of Foot & Mouth Disease!

A lot of people on this cruise were only ever going halfway and were getting off somewhere in Australia.  According to the Captain’s address last night, we picked up +/- 400 new passengers in Sydney alone … and you can tell, I think we picked up all the ignorant ones – shouting and yelling to each other on deck, reaching over you at dinner – I’m not brave enough myself but I can only hope that someone ‘realigns their expectations’ as Chris is fond of saying as to how to behave on board.

I’m getting slightly irritated at being banned from certain areas as certain times though.

There is a speciality restaurant which is set up every night in one of the small lounges, it happens to be our favourite lounge in which to read during the morning.  We’ve never wished to eat in the pop-up restaurant but every so often they rope off the entire lounge from first thing in a morning.  Ironically, I’ve never seen any more than about 4 people eating there anyway.

We came back aboard on Sunday afternoon in Sydney, very hot and sticky and wanting a swim in that cool pool on the back deck of the ship … ‘fraid not, it was closed off for a private event which turned out to be a thank-you-for-spending-shed-loads-of-money gathering with the Captain.  Why did they have to have it on the pool deck, everyone had their finery on, nobody was in the pool – could they not have had it in one of the many restaurants on board, or the nightclub where nobody is during the day?  Why did they have to spoil a whole outside seating area as much as anything else?

Captain’s address tonight said the wind was going to pick up and we were expecting 30-35kmph winds overnight and well into tomorrow … oh joy!

Day 2 of 3 at sea

Oh, man … it’s really cooling down.  I knew New Zealand was supposed to be similar climate to England but it’s too cold to sit on the deck; it was 34 degrees a week ago!  Apart from being too cold, you can’t see your hand in front of your face today!

Our Captain disembarks in Auckland, New Zealand (I can only hope he embarks a new one!) so he’s left us with a pig of a riddle:

Jack of all trades, and master of one
Afraid of the wind and in search of the sun
Dressed all in white, but is seldom seen
Doesn’t know where he’s going
But knows where he’s been

We think it’s the Captain himself … we thought it had to be something seafaring with it being his last riddle and may well have also been something to do with the ship.

Day 3 of 3 at sea

Oh, this is ridiculous, it’s 13 degrees and whilst that’s a pleasant change from sweat-your-skin-off-warm, it’s come as a bit of a shock!  It’s not misty today but there is plenty of cloud around, the odd arm of sunshine trying to reach us.  The lady-with-the-million-bikinis is still out there, obvs, running round looking for a sunbeam.

I had bangers and mash for lunch, trying to warm up from the inside!

We’ve gone forward another hour today which means that we’re at maximum time difference which is GMT +13 hours.  Dunedin, on the South Island of NZ and initially settled by the Scots (good pub quiz question) is the city that is furthest away from London – 19,000 km, so from hereon in, we should start clawing back a bit of time.

Dunedin

Almost 12,000 miles from home and as far south as we’re going to get. If we went any further south we’d need snow boots and an Antarctic map!

Expensive shuttle bus into town today because there is no public transport this far down the quay … £5 each way the robbing buggers.

It’s true what people tell you, New Zealand is a beautiful place.  I can see why the Scots stayed and it’s very reminiscent of Scotland or the Lakes.  The drive into town was beautiful.

I wouldn’t say cold, but it was definitely cool going into town this morning; bearing in mind we had to be back on board by 3.30pm we decided to make it an early start and was in Dunedin by 8.45am.  They’re late starters!  We had a coffee and a check on the web of things to do … by mere moments we missed out on a big bruiser of a three wheeled trike trip round the peninsular, would have suited Chris right down to the ground 😊

Anyway, fortified with some caffeine we had a tramp round the town centre.  The best thing was that there were very few chains … there was a miniscule McDonalds and a Starbucks, everything else was local independent shops.  We picked up some souvenirs and set about finding some lunch.

Unfortunately, we DID happen upon another Lincraft fabric shop that was closing down and I accidentally fell in; I wanted to buy everything and set up a shop at home!

We made our way back to the shuttle bus pick up point and found a pub doing local hooch and prawn tacos, they’re quickly becoming our favourite food!

Sadly, despite the ratio, we saw no sheep today, but Dunedin is clearly timber capital of the Southern Hemisphere!

Wellington tomorrow!