Picton, New Zealand

The Cloudy Bay Winery in Picton, New Zealand

Picton, NZ
The South Island
ms Amsterdam
February 11, 2013

Since the earthquakes in Christchurch on the south end of the South Island, some of
the cruise ships are starting to call in Picton which is on the north end of the South
Island. It's a tiny little community of 2,000 people and 2,000 boats (New Zealanders love
their water sports) but just over the coastal mountains is the Marlborough Valley, one of
the premier wine making regions in New Zealand.

For a long time, this valley was planted with apples, nuts, stone fruits, corn and probably
squash, too. They grow a lot of squash in NZ. It looks so much like the Napa Valley with
coastal mountains on one side and dryer hills on the other side but much, much bigger.
There are still lots of apple orchards and corn fields and of course sheep (the sheep
population is ten times the people population) but now tens of thousands of acres are
planted with grapes, specifically sauvignon blanc and pinot noir.

We opted for the Wine and Garden tour which, happily, was in the afternoon. I'd rather
taste wine at 2 pm than 10 am! We visited two vineyards, Cloudy Bay and Wither Hills
and had grand tasting experiences at both. Cloudy Bay is closer to the wetter coastal
hills while Wither Hills is named for the mountain range on the dryer side of the valley.

We did our tasting by candlelight in the barrel cellars at both wineries (reminded us
so much of the setting for our niece Erin's wedding at the Wente Winery in California)
starting with sparkling wine at each working our way through young to aged sauvignon
blancs then finishing with a pinot noir. Many of the people who were staying on the ship
for the entire cruise went back with several bottles from each winery.

Like the California wineries, each has a distinct architectural style and beautiful
grounds. They also serve light lunches which can be eaten as picnics on the grounds.
Although we didn't partake, we saw lots of people sprawled under the towering
eucalyptus trees at Cloudy Bay and the wisteria arbors at Wither Hills enjoying the day,
the place and the wine. There aren't near as many wineries as in Napa/Sonoma, but
there are quite a few throughout the valley, many offering "Accommodations" as well as
wine and food. Most on the tour voted for the Wither Bay offerings.

On the way back to the ship we stopped at Upton Gardens, a private garden planted
and maintained by a couple who had bought the property 25 years ago to renovate the
Victorian cottage located there. When the house was finished, Barbara Upton started
planting. The garden covers about an acre and a half with "rooms" defined by sharply
trimmed boxwoods and red cedar. There is a classic knot garden, a perennial garden,
an olive grove, vegetable garden and fruit orchard of apples and citrus and with pears
espaliered on a used brick wall. Completely untrained in landscape design, Barbara has
created a jewel of flowers, fruit and greenery. It was the perfect way to end our day in
the Picton region. Now to Sydney and home.

Leaving Wellington

Leaving Wellington on the way to Picton

I took this from our balcony last night about 11:30 as we left Wellington and headed to Picton, about 70 nautical miles away. I did NOT get up at 6 am for the colorful commentary as we headed into port; figured I'd catch it on the way out this evening at cocktail time.

Wellington: Hang on to Your Hat!

We're on top of Mt. Victoria with Wellington behind us. Our ship is just to the right of Jim's arm.

Wellington, NZ
ms Amsterdam
February 10, 2013

Once again we're at a pier in the commercial port area. NZ exports a lot of timber and
produce and whatever else is hiding in all those containers. HAL and the city have
provided a fleet of buses to shuttle people into the central city. Right across the pier is
the big, round sports stadium where they play professional rugby. No game today or
tonight. Would've been fun even if we would be clueless about the rules.

There are a lot of earthquakes in this part of the world. Wellington has on average
one a day. Of course most are so small you wouldn't know. But when they have a big
one, they are on a fault so as well as shaking, the earth literally rises a meter or more.
Evidently they are glass half full people because they say, "Oh, look. We now have
more land along the shore so let's go build something there." And they are certainly
optimistic because most of the houses are built on the sides of the hills around the
harbor. It's like San Francisco but with a lot more trees.

In fact, we rode a little red cable car from downtown up a steep cliff to the Botanical
Gardens. Since it's still summer here, the roses were spectacular. And since it's
Sunday, there were a number of locals in the gardens, too. They have a fabulous
Begonia House beautifully planted in drifts of color. The docent confided that the
begonias are nurtured elsewhere on the grounds and brought to the display when they
are at their peak.

We also stopped at Old St. Paul's, the original cathedral in Wellington, constructed
entirely of wood. It's used now just for weddings, funerals and other ceremonies. Inside
the docent pointed out a Marine flag and 48-star US flag hanging together. During WWII
over 70,000 Marines were in Wellington before going to battle. In fact, they lived in tents
on the grounds of the now-Botanical Gardens. They presented the flags that flew over
their temporary quarters to St. Paul's in gratitude for the hospitality extended by the
locals. The docent said it was very much a mutual admiration society.

Our driver took us all the way around the harbor to Mt. Victoria. Somehow he got that
bus up that narrow, winding road to the top and somehow most of us managed to climb
the 72 steps for a spectacular view of the entire city. Because it was Sunday, there were
all kinds of people walking, running or biking up that mountain. New Zealanders are
quite the outdoorsy group. There is a big half-marathon race around the bay next week
end (lots of posters and billboards about) so a lot of pre-race training going on.

We're in port until 11 tonight which is quite unusual and gives passengers and crew
alike time to spend ashore. This evening there is a big Food and Wine of New Zealand
party on the Lido (pool) Deck so we'll bypass our usual 8 pm in the dining room dinner.
As it happens, tomorrow in Picton, our only stop on the South Island, Jim and I are
going on a Wine and Garden tour which won't be until after lunch so we won't have to
set the alarm for an early departure. It will be fun to watch the ship leave port at night.
the ms Amsterdam may silently arrive at a port in the dawn's early light, but when this
ship leaves it does so with deep blasts of its horns that echo around the harbor (I need
my Chapman's to remind me of which toots mean what) and a band playing on the top
deck.

Picton is also our last port before we disembark in Sydney early on the 15th. So
many people have asked us if we wished we were staying aboard longer. It's been an
unbelievable adventure but we both think 40 days is enough for now. Of course if they
could bring a couple of crates of those strawberries on board I might reconsider...

Napier, New Zealand

The view from Cape Kidnappers in Napier, New Zealand

Napier, NZ
ms Amsterdam
February 9, 2013

"Jim, would you please go up to the bridge and tell the captain that I am not pleased
with the current location and to move the damned boat to the proper dock as promised."

Into each life some metaphorical rain must fall and today it's our turn. First of all we
had to leave Tauranga late because of the tides which meant bouncing along at 20+
knots instead of our usual regal 15 to 18. We still arrived about three hours later than
scheduled in Napier and thus lost our spot at the spiffy, close-to-town cruise dock.
We are in the commercial port surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of containers,
many of which are refrigerated so make a lot of noise as do the giant lift trucks that
are constantly in motion moving the containers from here to there and making a loud
beep-beep-beep whenever they are backing up. And it smells like diesel. And everyone
who just wanted to spend the day wandering through the streets admiring the Art Deco
architecture (the entire town was destroyed by an earthquake in the 30s and rebuilt in
the style of the day) has to take a 20 minute shuttle from pier to downtown. Because it is
a commercial pier, passengers and crew are not allowed to walk off but must be driven
through the gates. We had to do this in Lima, too, so when we return to the ship an
official will board the bus, count noses and make sure each person has a ship ID card
before opening the gate.

So before we leave on our excursion, postponed until the afternoon I will take just a little
time to whine, bitch and moan. I'm overdue.

Okay. All better now.

We can't remember why but we booked a shore excursion to Cape Kidnappers and the
gannet bird breeding colony. We had an adventure! In fact, we went on a Gannet Safari.
We drove all the way from one side of Hawkes Bay where the town of Napier is clear
around to the other side and Cape Kidnappers Station. This is a huge chunk of property
that has gone through several hands and is now owned by an American. He made a
lot of road improvements, planted timber (they grow a pine related to the Monterey
Pine that is harvested and exported mostly to Asia) and built a lodge and golf course.
Lemme tell ya, you REALLY have to want to play that course because it is a good 45
minutes from the station entry gate (a station is essentially a sheep or cattle ranch) on a
winding, hilly, narrow road to the road leading to the lodge and course.

We went past that, the end of the paved road, and went on an even narrower gravel
road the rest of the way. The sheep are all over the place; I really don't see how they
keep up with where they are. Some cattle, cows and calves are also grazing. This
ranch (think the size of the Ponderosa but looking more like the coastal hills of central
California) is also a protected area and when they say protected they mean from
predators. The owner had a fancy-pants fence built entirely around the place. It's about
four or five feet tall, made of metal with metal screening that is buried 20 inches into
the ground. This is to keep out rats, ferrets, stoates and cats so the rarer and nearly
extinct native birds can be relocated inside of the fence and flourish again. Especially
the kiwi. The kiwi is a chubby, flightless, defenseless bird that is nearly extinct. There is
a national movement to Save the Kiwi so the search is always on for a location without
predators. Happily they seem to be thriving at Cape Kidnappers.

After another 45 minutes or so we arrived atop the point at Cape Kidnappers and
the gannet breeding ground. You can hear and smell them before you see them but,
Bam!, there they were, hundreds of them. One breeding area is on top of the bluff
and the other way, way down on a promontory at sea level. They look like large gulls
with golden heads but are actually a type of booby bird. They nest on the ground with
the male and female taking turns sitting on the egg. We saw a lot of the chicks easily
differentiated by their fluffy down. Our guide told us that they weigh about 50 grams at
birth and will gain another couple of kilograms before they make the one migratory trip
in their lifetime before returning to their breeding ground. There was a lot of swooping
around and then lots of bird kisses when each bird returned to its nest and mate.

And the views. Spectacular! There are very steep, tall cliffs at this end of Hawkes Bay.
The water is a milky jade green color close to shore and then darkens to a Prussian
blue as it gets deeper father out. The water is a bit brisk (lots of mental translation
between C and F!), high 50s, low 60s. We reluctantly boarded our little safari buses to
go back down that winding road---one way in, same way out.

We thought we would be driven straight back to the ship, but when we got back to sea
level we made a "comfort stop" at the safari headquarters and were surprised with a
bountiful and delicious tea---cakes, cookies, muffins, tea or kiwi or orange juice, a big
variety of stone fruit and the. best. strawberries. ever. E.V.E.R. As each of us bit into
one our eyes widened in disbelief. Beyond lip-smacking good.

This area of New Zealand is quite temperate, gets 50 or 60 inches of rain and 300+
days of sun each year. It seems they can grow everything. We drove past apple, peach
and plum orchards, nut trees of all kinds, citrus, kiwi, vineyards and acres of vegetables.
There are little villages spotted around the bay. Napier appears to be a very popular
beach resort and has a flat pedestrian/bike-way that runs for miles and miles and miles
along the bay. Next time we're definitely going to rent bikes!

And once again, lovely, cordial people everywhere. No wonder New Zealand makes
potential immigrants jump through hoops otherwise half the world would relocate down
here. I'd do it for the strawberries alone!

Maori Excursion: Tauranga, New Zealand

Maori Performance: This song and dance is to scare off any enemies instead of fighting.

Tauranga, NZ
ms Amsterdam
February 8, 2013

"Glorious Bay of Plenty: Rich Land, Rich Culture" is the title of the shore excursion
we took today. We were to visit a Maori family, descendants of the migrants who first
arrived by ocean-going canoes (wakas) from central Polynesia more than 650 years
ago, spend time at a kiwi farm and finish at a "stunning coastal headland site of a
centuries-old Maori fortification." We chose this a couple of months ago evidently
thinking we should learn more about the Maoris. Well, fooled us. Our guide, Charlie,
went rogue.

Ahhhhhh, Auckland!

Approaching our berth with the skyline of downtown Auckland in the background. For $200 or so you can do a free fall jump from the Skytower (the pointy tower building).  I'll pass.

ms Amsterdam
February 5-7, 2013

Because of the rough weather around Rarotonga, we headed straight to New Zealand,
arriving in Auckland in gale force winds Tuesday evening about 6 pm. The temperature
was in the low 60s, mostly due to the ripping wind (it nearly knocked me off my pins as
I stood on deck taking pictures), which felt delicious after weeks in the tropics. I even
broke out my new windbreaker (thank you AAA) to wear on deck.

We docked right at the foot of Queens Street in downtown Auckland. The New Zealand
government is very strict about bringing anything alive or once alive ashore; no fruit,
meat, seeds, flowers, shells, animal products are allowed with stiff fines if you dare to
test the law. So we put on long pants, left the forbiddens behind and went ashore.

After so many days at sea and only island visits in between it was a pure delight to walk
down the gangway to a real pier and walk on a real sidewalk. We window-shopped
for a couple of miles up and down Queen Street until dusk, about 8:45 pm. Back in
the stateroom we ignored the sign on the verandah door, "To maintain a comfortable
stateroom temperature, please keep door closed at all times," and propped the door
wide open and enjoyed the cool, fresh air. I'm pretty sure we weren't the only ones to
ignore that directive tonight.

Tomorrow we're going on a Highlights of Auckland tour in the morning and then will
have the afternoon to explore some more. First on the agenda is to get some NZ
dollars. The ship ran out, the exchanges were closed by the time we got ashore this
evening and tomorrow is a bank holiday. We're pretty sure our Visa card will work in
an ATM machine if we can recall the password. Since I found a great yarn shop on our
evening walk that had a sign in the door "Open on the holiday from 10-6" I have plenty
of incentive to remember those four digits!

February 6

The first thing our guide said this morning was, "We love Americans; if it weren't for
your boys in WWII we wouldn't be speaking English today. We'll never forget." Well,
now, that's a first! Did you hear that, France? And this was not an isolated incident. I fell
in love with Auckland just steaming into port but even more so after exploring the city.
It's clean, no graffiti, very friendly people and you can almost understand what they're
saying! We spent some time yesterday looking for "Henny's" shoe store which turned
out to be "Hannah's."

Today was a big holiday commemorating the treaty between the Maoris and English in
the 1800s so it seemed that everyone was either at the beach or out sailing. They call
Auckland the City of Sails and for good reason. Boats, boats, boats everywhere. The
day was just perfect, dry and sunny and not too hot. We visited the Auckland Museum
in the early morning; it has loads of exhibits about the Maori history of NZ. We drove
around part of the harbor then back and forth across the bridge before it was time to get
some NZ dollars and go shopping! The banks might have been closed today, but not
the exchange offices. Between the holiday people and the passengers from the cruise
ships (the Europa and Voyager of the Seas were also in port), Auckland was a busy,
busy place. It's very walkable and the drivers do stop on the red so crossing the street
was not an issue. It's just so hard to remember to look right!

We ate green lipped mussels for dinner (they were HUGE! At least twice as large as
those we can buy in the states) at a waterside restaurant where the America's Cup
boats were docked as the sun was setting. What a perfect day.

February 7

Today we took the 12-minute ferry ride across the harbor to Devonport, which looks like
a Victorian Sausalito. It has a very charming business district with loads of shops, cafes,
pubs and galleries, but it's also home to locals who can commute to Auckland by that
same ferry. (Senior round trip was NZ$9.40 or about US$8)

One of our dinner table companions, another Susan (our waiter thinks we're sisters),
came with us. Poor Jim; he had two Susan's going two different directions and each
coming back with more packages for him to schlep. The wonderful yarn shop and
wonderful quilt shop were separated by an equally wonderful book shop. I was in a state
of bliss and quickly ran through the NZ$ I'd gotten the night before.

To show you how unbelievably nice the people are, I went into the ANZ bank to change
US to NZ and the teller said, "We have to charge you a $5 transaction fee, but the BNZ
does not. It's just a half-block up the street; go there instead." Can you imagine a teller
at the Bank of America telling you to go to the Chase branch instead? So we went up to
the BNZ, got our NZ dollars and a handful of pens! (Pens seem to be scarcer than hen's
teeth on the ship.) And then we gleefully went out to do our bit for the NZ economy. I'm
just one person but I do what I can.

81 people disembarked from the ship yesterday and I'm not sure how many new
passengers are on board now but we're having another passenger/crew emergency
drill at 4:15 this afternoon before we leave this wonderful spot around 5 pm and head to
Tauranga where we will spend tomorrow.

Suddenly we have just a week before we reach Sydney and we disembark to fly home.

"Snow" Day

ms Amsterdam
January 31, 2013

We were supposed to spend the day on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands however when
we arrived dawn-ish this morning the whole island was engulfed by rain. We knew
something was up because instead of anchoring and preparing to launch the tenders
the ship was hovering a couple of miles off shore in choppy seas and a wicked wind.
At about 7:30 the captain made the announcement that it was indeed too rough and windy
(35 knots) to launch the tenders and the weather was not going to improve, so we were
going to head on towards New Zealand and maybe an extra day in Auckland.

So it's a Snow Day!!! Bruce the Cruise Director is now scrambling to have a new day's
program printed and just announced that all the usual sea day activities would be held.
We're disappointed to miss Rarotonga; it has its own currency, Cook Dollars, that are
non-negotiable anywhere else in the world (it also uses NZ Dollars), has one road
around the island with two buses, one running clockwise the other counter-clockwise
and supposedly the best bargain shopping in Polynesia. As one of my ship-board
friends just told me, "I've been here three times and have yet to get ashore."

Oh, and it's Dutch Day. Happy 75th Birthday, Queen Beatrix.