March 27, 2025
Our last port in New Zealand and it definitely is one of my favorite countries. We noticed yesterday in Auckland, when looking at a map of New Zealand, how it resembles a flipped Florida with the panhandle on the left instead of the right. See what you think.
Today was the Bay of Islands which is a tender port and we were here last year on the world cruise. It is a tender port and we were only here until 3pm so not a lot of time to do much. We took the tender in around 10am and walked into town instead of taking the shuttle provided. It is a nice walk along the beach and is only 1.3 miles. The closest town is Pahia and it is not a very big town. The Bay of Islands is a great place in the summer for boating, swimming, fishing and all sorts of water sports.
The Beach walk and you can see that the tide was out. It is already getting cool in the evening so not much water activity this time of year.
The town was having a small farmers market which they have every Thursday. It was only about 10 booths and mostly produce or local honey. We did find a booth that had dill pickles and she had a sample which I tried and loved so I bought a jar. We explained that it was very hard to find dill pickles on the cruise ship and the lady explained that dill pickles was not a big thing in New Zealand and you could not find them in many places. She was one of the few people who made them and everyone told her she was crazy. When we went to the grocery store later we looked for pickles and noticed she was correct. No dill pickles or dill relish.
We walked the town for a bit and commented on how all the cruise ship people were swarming around the town like ants looking for something to do. We found a cafe on a side alley that looked like mostly locals and ordered some coffee for Kathy, lemonade for me and we split a cheese and tomato pin wheel and a cheddar and jalapeño scone. Both were delicious but the scone was the best since it was like a giant biscuit.
We had a little bit of New Zealand money to spend so we went into the local grocery store and picked up a few more bags of New Zealand made chips. After that we started our walk back to the tender port since the last tender was at 2:30.
A local colorful bench in town and the town of Pahia. It has several wharfs for ferries and tourist trips.
Tons of shells on the beach and turns out I took a picture just like this for my blog last year. Our ship out in the bay. It was about a 25 minute tender ride but very smooth.
The purple morning glories were everywhere.
We made it back to the tender port right as a tender was getting ready to leave. We were fine waiting for the next tender but 1 of the crew saw us and held the boat for us. One of the things we did compliment Oceania on was their tender service. We have never sat waiting on a tender for longer than 5 minutes coming or going. They really do the whole tender thing quite well.
Another thing they do well is iced tea so we went up to the buffet before it closed so Kathy could get a beer and I could get several glasses of iced tea. We have free beer and wine with meals. Any other time there is a charge but they also don’t care what you bring back on board to have in your room. Since we had lunch in town we did not get anything off the buffet and we also have dinner tonight in Toscana, the Italian restaurant on board. We do have an assistant waiter named Chit who has befriended us and she works there so we asked the restaurant manager if he could sit us in her section. She is getting off in Sydney to go back to Burma for a well deserved holiday.
We spent the afternoon up on deck 9 in some lounge chairs at the very front of the ship. They have a small area that is reserved for our level to hang out with comfortable loungers and a large hot tub. It is a small area and while it is supposed to be reserved everyone usually finds out about it and uses it. We figured we found a spot today because most people are still learning the boat and did not know about it.
A beautiful schooner out in the bay.
We sailed right at 3pm and after a couple of hours on deck 9 we headed back to our room and our balcony to read and cross-stitch.
We now have 2 days at sea before Sydney. I will say that being in these last few ports that we also went to on the world cruise has us missing the friends that we made and reminiscing about them.