March 26th, 2025
As anticipated the announcements started bright and early at 7:30am. They don’t make the announcements into your room but you can still hear the chime every time they come over the loudspeaker. We had the white noise app on and Kathy had earplugs in but still difficult to sleep in.
The plan for today was to take the ferry the short ride across the harbor to Devenport and walk around and have lunch. We even took our books with us so we could sit in the park on the water and read for a bit. By the time we got off the boat around 10am, all of the disembarking passengers were gone. All the cabins around us were wide open and being cleaned for new passengers. We lost all our neighbors, not that we knew any of them. On the back of the ship there are 4 cabins, 2 are suites and 2 regular cabins in the middle.
We walked over to the ferry terminal and purchased 2 round trip tickets to Devenport and had a short wait for the ferry since they run every 30 minutes. You can get to Devenport by car but you have to drive around the whole harbor to get there so much shorter by ferry.
Our boat as we passed by on the ferry.
The ferry ride is 15 minutes long. We walked around town and I found a pedicure place and went in and made an appointment for 1pm. We found a cafe and Kathy had some coffee and I had a hot chocolate. We then walked the town and browsed the shops and then went to a bench by the water and read until it was time for me to go get my pedicure. We found a lunch spot where Kathy sat and got a beer and waited for me to be done. The pedicure cost 22 dollars and if I had gotten it on the boat it would have cost $69 plus 20% tip. I do love these countries that don’t expect a tip. After the pedicure we had lunch and then caught the 3:30 ferry back to Auckland.
Auckland skyline with our boat off to the right.
The ferry building and the back of our boat. I have circled our balcony. We are right above the “N”. The cabin right next to us to the right is a regular cabin like ours but the other 2 cabins on the back are suits with wrap around balconies.
We ran some last minute errands in town including running to the grocery store for some local chocolate and picking up a last minute souvenir or 2. The exchange rate is very nice for American dollars which is another reason my pedicure was so cheap.
We think the boat is sailing at 7 which is what it said on the sign when we left the boat this morning. They did deliver the daily paper to our room last night, called The Current” and that said that all on board was 10:30pm and we would sail at 11 so when we asked security she was very surprised by that and took a picture of the wrong info that was posted on the paper and said she would talk to somebody about the discrepancy. We were thinking of the 100 people that stayed on for this cruise and if you went by the paper in your room and did not notice the sign when leaving that could be a big problem. When we saw the paper last night we were thinking we would have dinner in town again but canceled that when we realized the times were wrong.
We are currently sitting on our balcony and we are watching all the ferries go back and forth. There has to be at least 30 every hour coming and going and they are all different sizes. Also we have seen 4 groups of sailboats go out while sitting here.
The town behind the boats on the right is Devenport so you can see how close it is to Auckland. The sail boats seem to be going out in shifts and it is going to be fun when we sail dodging all the ferries and sail boats.
We have our last stop in New Zealand tomorrow and it is also a repeat stop for us. It is a tender port and we have nothing planned. We know that the boat usually has a shuttle into the small town but we also remember that it is a nice walk along the beach to get into town so we will probably do that.