Cruising Downunder- a wonderful way to go

For the outrageous sum of 50 cents per minute I can use my computer onboard our cruise ship to update the blog. Forget it! So, we have been sailing for one week and there has not been a port of call with time enough to update the blog until today. We are in Wellington, New Zealand on a wet Sunday afternoon. We are sitting in an internet cafe (which is why I don't have my own computer and cannot update the photos for the past week) for the bargain price of $4 NZD per hour. It is luxury!

We boarded our ship in Sydney and set sail for Melbourne. Our cabin is on the second floor, "deep and cheap". We have an inside cabin which is astoundingly dark at night and we were able to sleep in until very late in the morning on our sea days. In Melbourne we took a tour out into the country on the "Puffing Billy" steam engine, and a bus tour of the city. The weather was beautiful and it matched the gorgeous city views of Melbourne. We had a few cold, rocky at sea days that resulted in my desire to spend the majority of the day sleeping. The day we arrived in Milford Sound, New Zealand was clear and beautiful; one of those rare days in this rain forest area that was clear and beautiful. My photos of the area will show you just how sensational this area is when I get a chance to post them. We spent a day cruising the fiords (Milford, Dusky, Thompson Sounds)without going ashore (there is not much ashore in these remote areas). The following day we arrived in the picturesque city of Dunedin. Once again we opted for a train trip to see the countryside, as we have spent many visits in Dunedin. The old wooden train (the cars were built in the 1920s) met us in the port town where we docked and took us through a gorge. The volunteer staff that works the train served us tea, then later a light lunch as we traveled through the countryside. The manager of our carriage took a shine to us and shared her insights into when and where i needed to be standing on the observation platform between the cars to get the great photos of the gorge and our train traveling over the wooden bridges. It was a wonderful day and we left the train with a new friend, Daphne, who volunteers on the train several days a week to help earn money for her community.

After Dunedin, our next port was Christchurch, where we did our third and final train trip. We left on a modern train this time, from the port, and traveled through the city of Christchurch and across the rural Canterbury Plains to the New Zealand Alps, where we traveled through the mountains to the tiny town of Arthur's Pass. There we were met by buses that had carried other cruise passengers to this point, and we took the buses back while they toured on the train. The buses took us on a city tour where we were able to walk around the city square and the botanic gardens.

Today we are in the national capital, Wellington. Sundays in New Zealand are traditionally slow days with no shopping available. We have never been here, at the south end of the North Island so we opted to spend the day walking around, doing internet and just kicking back rather than taking a tour. Tomorrow is Napier, and if we have time, I will try to upload the photos from the past week.

Until then-
Deanne