Stewart Island, Oban, and Rakiura National Park...

 January 5, 2025

The good weather continued to stay with us for our stay in Oban on Stewart Island, south of the South Island of New Zealand. Tomorrow will be seven days until we leave the Seabourn Quest. She says, quietly letting tears flow. It's been a long journey, perhaps too long at our age, but we've made a couple of new friends and seen parts of the world we've never seen before and a few we have seen before.

Seabourn Quest, our "Home Away from Home" as the Captain calls it.

This is one of the "tenders" that takes us back and forth to our destination when there is no docking facility.

From the tender, this is what we see approaching the ship after a day ashore. That tiny little square down by the waterline is our miniscule landing spot.

Our miniature landing spot, AKA, "dock," up closer.

Part of the tiny (about 700 full time residents) town of Oban on Stewart Island.

Randy keeps damaging himself. Luckily for him, he has a live-in nurse.

Although Oban and Stewart Island do not get much rainfall (a lot less than Tucson), the forest surrounding it (Rakiura National Park, which encompasses more than 90% of the island), the forest is quite thick!

Our chariot for our tour.

Our guide and chariot driver.

Interesting way of honoring people, these are embedded in the ground.

Use your imagination on this, it is a GIANT link in a GIANT chain.

Another embedded saying.

A memorial to the first telephone line laid underwater to Stewart Island.

Kiwis come out in the evening so we have not seen one in the wild yet.

And so we leave Oban and head to "scenic cruising" tomorrow in Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound, a couple of places that we have been before, on a driving (in a campervan, known as an RV is the States) trip many years ago. The Captain tells us we will continue to have good weather tomorrow.

Timaru and some sunshine...

 Sunshine in Timaru! We took the shuttle provided by the town into the town and were rewarded with a nice pub lunch and a farmers' market/craft fair. I bought two pairs of Christmas earrings. Wait until next year!

Speights Ale is the local brewery and we each had a nice ale (is there any other kind?) at Speights Ale House. I had an APA Pale Ale and Randy had an Old Dark Ale.

The original sign with a slight change of ownership!

Randy's Old Dark Ale

All the beers on tap. And one of the barmaids, all the servers were women.

Speights is housed in the oldest building Timaru.

Don't know the name of the flowering tree (we were told its Maori name and I promptly forgot it). We were told it rarely blooms!

Where I bought my Christmas earrings.

Some of the other craftspeople.

A nice short afternoon in a lovely little town. On to Oban on Steward Island, the furthest south we will have ever been. Previously we had been to Bluff, the southernmost town on the South Island. Oban is further south but only accessible by air or ferry. Or Cruise Ship.

Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again Another Day...

January 4, 2025

It's not been all THAT rainy, but it just seems that way because of the weather overnight. We have visited Wellington before and quite a few other places in New Zealand but some of the stops are new to us (Matiatia, Timaru, and Oban or Stewart Island). 

Wellington is the capitol of New Zealand and a beautiful little city if you have a car, but for us, with no tour scheduled, it was just a quiet getaway-from-the-cruise-ship-for-a-few-hours excursion. January 2 is apparently a national holiday and there was almost nothing open, just a couple of tourist souvenir shops. And a nice pub/restaurant.

As you can see, a stunningly beautiful day! The round building is a government building called the Beehive and is the Executive Wing of their Parliament Building.

Downtown Wellington was deserted on what normally would be a busy downtown street.

We managed to find a pub that was open (many restaurants we passed were closed, some until January 13) and we tried some New Zealand beers. Mine was semi-American because they used American hops rather than NZ hops.

Downtown was deserted but we were passed by about 40 busses in the time we were eating (and drinking!) our lunch.

From Wellington we went on to Christchurch and the rainiest day yet. And some of the worst seas yet on the way to Christchurch, our tour of the Air Force Museum of New Zealand (About the Air Force Museum of New Zealand) and the International Antarctic Center (www.iceberg.co.nz), and pouring down rain. Again.

Some passengers braving the wind and rain to go on tour. It was worse later when we went!

Pictures are worth a thousand dollars!

Our guide to the Air Force Museum, Steve. Excellent guide!

Bleriot XI-2 “Brittania”

It was a larger and more powerful version of the Bleriot XI, the aircraft in which inventor-turned-aviator Louis Bleriot had famously become the first person to fly across the English Channel, in July 1909.

The XI-2 was presented to the New Zealand Government in 1913 by a group of English businessmen known as the Imperial Air Fleet Committee. After an embarrassing start – it arrived in New Zealand without its propeller – Britannia’s first demonstration flights took place above the Auckland Showgrounds in January 1914. It was flown by official Government Pilot, Joe Hammond, one of the few New Zealanders who held a pilot’s licence at the time.

When the time came to choose a passenger, Hammond picked pantomime actor Esme McLellan rather than one of the many dignitaries present.

They have a repair/refurbish shop much like the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. Our guide had heard of it and hoped to visit one day.

When this recreation is done, it will be the only one in the world.

All in all, an interesting excursion. But that museum needs more seating areas! Luckily, I had my seat cane with me so I could sit down whenever I wanted to.

On to the Antarctic Experience.

Still pouring down rain. Or, as our old weather station said, "Raining cats and dogs!"

Looking for our guy in pink (one of the cruise passengers on our tour) was the only way to keep track of our group since our guide wasn't telling where we were going next!

Inside the "cold room" a storm was raging. It was really, REALLY cold in there and they had a high speed fan blowing that really, REALLY cold air around. They did give us coats to wear, but no easy way to get out before the 10 minute demonstration of just exactly how cold it was in Antarctica was done.

They did have a nice little cafeteria.

And still raining when we got back to the ship.

On to Timaru tomorrow (January 4).

Tonga Adventures...

Writing on New Year’s Eve, 2024

Where to start? We’ve been busily traveling through the South Pacific and have reached New Zealand. When you last heard from me, we were leaving the Society Islands, better known, perhaps, as French Polynesia. We went on to Tonga and then a lot of sea days before reaching New Zealand and our first three stops, Bay of Islands, Matiatia Bay, and Auckland. We are now sailing towards Wellington but will have to miss Kaikoura that we were supposed to visit the day after Wellington. It is not to be, thanks to the weather gods whom we have definitely not been pleasing lately! The good news is that we get to overnight in Wellington. Perhaps we’ll have dinner ashore?

Starting with Tonga. We had a long, ship-sponsored tour of the island. Not the best experience but it was an experience. Oh, boy, was it an experience. We knew the bus would be primitive (we were warned not to expect too much), but I at least thought it would have openable windows considering the temperatures were hovering in the low 90s---and the humidity was in the 90s as well. And the driver seemed to think that parking the bus in the sun was an admirable idea. We did not agree! They miscounted the number of visitors for the show and meal, and since we were in the very back of the bus and thus the last ones off the bus, they had to find seats for us to be able to eat and watch the show. As I said, it was an interesting adventure.

The lowlights highlights:

The women who served our lunch. They also danced for us later.

Same women dancing for us.

The men wore skirt as well.

An artistic use of old bicycle tires.

Flying foxes have a home on Tonga...

...and back we came to our home away from home, beautiful, airconditioned, Seabourn Quest!

We did a few other things on the tour, but none were memorable since I didn't take any photos of them!

Then we had three---or was it four?---sea days and on to beautiful New Zealand in my next post.

Uturoa, Raiatea photos only...

 December 16, 2024

Typical Polynesian town, Uturoa

We dock right in town.

typical young couple.

This is how close we are to town.

Boats are mostly stored like this, raised above the water.

This is a series of photos from a pearl farmer showing us how to implant the seed and how to harvest the black pearls from this area.

Little bit of a nervous walk out to the store on a very narrow walkway.

Randy (we didn't buy any pearls).

Taro, a staple in Polynesia (and Hawaii and the Cook Islands)

We stopped for refreshments with a local family.

The spread of fruits.

Dogs (and chickens) are everywhere.

A "moto" is apparently a very tiny island.

Another moto

And another.

Our tour guide did a hula on the bus for us. It was very beautiful in spite of the uncommon surroundings.