Sheep!

I LOVE New Zealand. Two ports and the Fjordlands down, and I am more than ready to leave everything and move here. To say I like New Zealand more than Australia would be unfair since I have only seen the big cities of Australia, but what I’ve seen of New Zealand is far closer to my taste. The towns are quaint, the scenery is quite lovely, and everything is so much simpler. Each town is working hard to increase it’s tourism and bring more people in, and I’m pretty sure they’re not using MBAs in order to accomplish that. Or working as hard as possible to get a plethora of business experience in order to get to the top. I digress.

The Fiordlands were a unique experience. I learned a lot about New Zealand’s history while we sailed through the Fiordlands since that’s the first thing that Captain Cook saw and documented when he discovered New Zealand in the 1770’s. It finally clicked for me that Australia and New Zealand are far younger countries than even the USA. This was surprising since I have grown accustomed to being one of the youngest countries in the world, and for some reason I had it in my head that Australia had been discovered long before America had. I was of course wrong. The Fiordlands are water straits that have been cut by glaciers, and they are all over the north-western side of the south island. We had a local forest ranger on board that told us their history as we sailed through many of them. It was quite lovely. Captain Cook had a bit of fun naming the hundreds of islands along the waterway… I’m pretty sure he ran out of names quickly and just started naming them whatever word came to mind first.

Dunedin (pronounced Dune-eedin) was the first port we’ve stopped at. We booked a tour with a local company apart from the cruise line since the cruise is overpriced for anything additional once you’re aboard, and there are always local tours at a fraction of the cost, which are easy to find now that the internet has made the world so much smaller. We choose a wildlife tour so that we would be able to see most of the New Zealand-specific animals. We were chosen to go through customs (2% of the passengers, and somehow we were chosen!), which worked out nicely because we ended up being one of the first off the ship. We found our tour guide and discovered we were the only two booked for the tour- a private tour! Apparently they had 27 people the day before, so we lucked out that no one else had booked with them from our cruise. I thank all the old people on the ship who could not handle the walking. Although there wasn’t a whole lot of walking for the tour, New Zealand does appear to be made up purely of hills, so if you are walking, it’s either at a 45 degree angle up or down at all times, which wears on you quickly. Dunedin has the steepest road in the world according to Guinness World Records; however, I’m pretty sure almost every road we traveled on was just as steep as the steepest. Beat that San Francisco.

We traveled around the countryside, taking in the thousands of sheep in all of the pastures surrounding the town, and went to Tiger Peninsula, where the only Royal Albatross colony is located in New Zealand (the only other place in the world is a tiny island a thousand miles off the coast). They have a wingspan of 3 meters (I love you, metric system!), and we were fortunate enough to be there right after some of the hatchlings had been born, which we got to see. We also had the opportunity to go to a private beach owned by the owner of the tour company, which had a view of a fur seal breeding ground where we saw pups running around playing with their moms, as well as massive sea lions that we stood 5 feet from since they don’t have any fear of humans, yellow-eyed penguins and their young, blue penguins (the smallest penguin in the world), and more sheep. We went four-wheeling through the pastures in a small van, and all I could keep thinking was that if those brakes went out, we were at a 45 degree angle right down to the cliffs over the water. During the off-roading adventure, my dad and our tour guide discovered they both shared an interest in beer snobbery. Our guide brews his own beer, and he knew all of the microbreweries in town, so upon completing our tour early since it was just the three of us, we went over to one of the microbreweries, tried all of their beers, got the t-shirt, and then went on to a local pub. I’m pretty sure this has been the highlight to my dad’s trip thus far.

Today we went to Christchurch/Lyttelton. We had no tours scheduled for the day, so we took the shuttle into town and walked around. There were no sheep there. New Zealand has heavy European influences all through it, so it looks and feels like many of the small towns you’d find in Europe. We found another microbrewery to make my dad’s day, then walked through the botanic gardens, through a couple local markets, and watched as people punted through the park (similar to taking a gondola along the river flowing through the city). Lyttelton was a tiny town along the water that is trying very hard to bring tourists to it… however, it was scarcer than even Midland or Golden’s downtowns, so our walkthrough there did not last long to say the least. They did however, have a time ball- it’s a tower on a building with a ball similar to the ball setup for new years in Times Square… at 1 o clock every day, the ball is dropped. It was how in the old days people could set their clocks based on Greenwich time to ensure they were all set to the correct time. That would be about all that you can find in Lyttelton.

Food. Oh the food. Let me tell you about some of my meals. Today was an international dinner, so I had a Mediterranean salad with a duck appetizer followed by lamb with mint jelly and a chocolate passion fruit genache for dessert. I have found a new love in passion fruit… I’m not sure if I’ve ever had it before, but it’s a new favorite fruit. I’ve had passion fruit yogurt for breakfast every morning, yum! And kiwis, fresh kiwis! New Zealanders call themselves kiwis because of the native kiwi fruit grown here, as well as the kiwi bird, a national symbol of New Zealand. Yesterday was the Thai dinner, satay and panang curry. I had a rabbit appetizer a couple of days ago; rabbit is dry, I don’t recommend it. Lamb is amazing. Yesterday for lunch they brought us a takeaway. Here, fast food is called takeaways. We had a turkey/brie/cranberry sandwich with an apricot/poppy seed muffin and fresh New Zealand cherries. Drool. I just got back from dinner and am so stuffed I’m going to explode, and I’m still drooling.

Tomorrow, we will be in Wellington, where we have a city and Middle Earth tour. For now, I’m going to take my book and sit out on our balcony and watch the moon dancing on the waves. And dream of never having to go back to any other commitments. Cheers!

G'Day mate!

G’Day from the Tasmanian Sea on Australia Day! I am currently on Day 3 of my Australian cruise with my father. Today just happens to be Australia’s equivalent of the US Independence Day, and since it seems the majority of the ship is Australian, it is being celebrating with rigor around here. The Australian Open is also currently taking place in Melbourne and is all that we have been watching the past few days. We also have wifi on the entire cruise, so I figured while my dad naps, I could take the opportunity to write a quick update from the sea!

We successfully arrived in Sydney Saturday morning (roughly 5:30pm EST Friday!!) after a very long flight (my ankles swelled again! NOT good) and spent the day exploring the city. It was in the 90s the entire day, which is quite the shock coming from the freezing temperatures of Michigan. We walked the Botanic Gardens, which are inhabited by thousands of bats, all waiting to poop on you as they sleep during the day in the trees. Luckily, I had no such incidents. We also took a harbor cruise around the city since it is almost all along the water to see the historic districts and the Sydney Opera house and harbor bridge. We’ll be back in Sydney for the last two days of our trip and will be visiting the Aquarium and Wildlife exhibits to see the ‘roos and koalas that I otherwise won’t have the opportunity to see this trip.

Sunday was boarding day for the cruise. We hopped on a plane to Melbourne and headed for the pier. Turned out the ship was 3 hours late getting back because of bad seas during its last sea day, which meant we had 3 hours to burn at the pier before they started loading. We walked the harbor and had fresh fish and chips at a small little restaurant. We also discovered that about 90% of the people on our cruise seem to be above the ripe age of 60. I have the feeling I am the only single twenty-something (outside of staff) on this cruise… and even honeymooners are scarce! This, however, means that there are certain times of the day when the ship seems deserted… before 9am, after 8pm, and the apparent naptime from 3-5pm. It also means that they can’t judge ages and keep thinking I’m much older and that my dad and I are married. CREEPY. That mistake has only been made twice, but that’s 2 too many times for me.
The last two days has also reminded me of a conversation Kelsey and I had before I left regarding how people feel rejuvenated…whether it be alone, or by being around other people. We discussed it from the standpoint of hanging out with friends and such, but I have now been regarding it from the standpoint of strangers. Being on a ship of 2000 passengers where you get sat with random people for every meal, it is easy to determine where you stand on the issue. My dad is the type to love sitting with new people each time, make small talk, tell the same stories over and over. I, however, have already grown tired of it, and although I prefer the seated meals, I have started thinking more and more that I’d prefer to do the buffet just to have a break from trying to keep up conversation with strangers. We have table assignments for dinners, and somehow we ended up at a table of 4 with two other women. After dinner with them for one night, I feel like the conversation has already dried up and have no idea how we will possibly be able to continue coming up with new topics for 10 more nights!! Thus, I’ve once again put myself into the loner category for rejuvenation regardless of the fact that I rejuvenate better in the presence of friends.

Despite my introverted tendencies with strangers, we have still found ourselves some companions in some of our activities. We both enjoy doing the daily trivia that is offered, and on the first day we teamed up with an older couple to better our odds. And wouldn’t you know it, we won! We beat somewhere around 30 other teams. We haven’t been as fortunate in the last two rounds of trivia, but we have decided to stick together and continue to be a team throughout the cruise on sea days. We also played carpet bowling today, and our team of approximately 10 people beat out 3 other teams , and we all won gold medals. I have won a gold medal for some competition on every cruise I have been on thus far… so either my family is overly competitive, or the old people are making it too easy on us J I think it is partly due to the fact that we enjoy the activities, so we participate in everything offered that we can fit in. My dad was 1 point away from winning a golf chipping –into-the-pool contest today.

Tonight is formal night, and tomorrow is cruising through the Fjordlands of New Zealand, the first contact we’ll have with New Zealand. If I knew how to easily load up pictures, I might show them here..but as it is, I don’t, so you don’t get any… so sorry!

And as one final note….it seems almost everyone on board is either Australian/New Zealander/British. So I am surrounded by a similar accent everywhere I go… I’m not going to be surprised if I start picking it up without noticing, I’ve already repeated random phrases I’d never otherwise use. Now I must sign off, good show ole chap!