loving retirement
Day 54 – Queenstown to Fox Glacier Our drive from Queenstown to Fox Glacier was another cloudy and gray one. After we checked in, we drove the 20 minutes over to the view point of Fox Glacier. It was about as womp-womp as we expected. Be it tiny, the town has a few places for…
Day 51: drive to Queenstown This was a “different” New Zealand than what we had experienced so far. The dreary duldrums were gone by the time we woke up. Finally, it looked like the New Zealand we expected. One stop on our drive to Queenstown was to see the Roaring Meg. The force of the…
Day 43: Rotorua to Napier In Rotorua, we picked up a car for the next part of our journey. The Māori watercraft in the car rental area of the terminal was cool. A right-drive car was new to us both. And the views were amazing. Our drive from Rotorua to Napier was a bit more…
Day 38: re-packing and resting Our first day in Auckland was pretty chill. We re-packed some of our things and spent most of the day resting and napping. Ship life was hard work. I kept wondering when the relaxing would kick in. We took a bus to the harbour and went for a short walk….
Day 36: Waitangi, New Zealand After breakfast, a longer tender ride, and a short shuttle ride, we were able to walk through the little town. The shops weren’t too great, but we did stop for a drink in a local (far less touristy) sports bar. It was a beautiful day, weather wise, so we had…
Day 32: Nuku’alofa, Tonga We slept through docking…but it didn’t feel like we were docked. We were perched parallel to the shore and not in the (shallow) bay. Ocean waves are hitting the side of the boat and “shattering” it pretty hard. It was honestly rougher than the previous few days of passage. He made…
Day 26: not Aitutaki Arutanga, Aitutaki was far too stormy and the seas too rocky for us to get in. After the captain announced our delay, we slept in. Since it was too deep to anchor, we were just bobbing around near the island we could barely see. After the delay and with no improvement,…
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas….
Day 22: Nūnu’e, Bora Bora, Society Islands, French Polynesia Our day started off with a bit of a hiccup. Our ship couldn’t enter the bay due to a 40mph windy storm. The Captain had to swing out and around and make another approach. (In a ship, this is a bigger deal than in an airplane,…