February 3, 2024

Another great day in New Zealand! I am loving being on dry land and not bouncing around! We were up and out early this am to catch the 8am ferry to another island about 40 minutes away called Waiheke. This island is known for its vineyards and has lots of wine tours and also lots of beaches. We were going for zip lining. The day was actually cold and the high was only 69 and forecast for lots of wind so we wore pants and long sleeve shirts and took rain jackets. We got to the island nice and early and had about an hour to wait until our pick-up time of 9:45. During the hour we were waiting several rain squalls came through and really windy. We watched several ferries come in and ferries are a way of life for New Zealanders. Bikes, dogs and suitcases are common to see on the ferries.

We got picked up on time and there were 4 other couples with us and 1 single. Of course we were the oldest but everyone was a lot of fun. We had a couple from India, Auckland, Australia and Chicago with us. It took about 30 minutes to get up to where the zip lining was and the driver talked about life on the island along the way.

Once there we got an orientation and geared up. It was raining on and off while gearing up but it cleared nicely before we started. For those that don’t know I am not big on zip-lining, Kathy is but I hate heights but I thought in New Zealand it would not be that high since the island has hills and not mountains so I could probably do it.

The view from where zip-lining started

Us all geared up and ready for our first line

They took us in pairs and we had 3 zip lines. They started off with the easy and short one first and got longer and higher as we went. I made Kathy wait to be the last pair on the first zip line and then we rotated so we ended up first on the highest and longest.

It was not bad. You can see one of the last couples coming in and how long the ride was.

Kathy getting disconnected after her last ride. She had a good time but this was kind of tame compared to what she has done before.

At the end we had to “walk” back up to where we started but it was a beautiful walk in the woods and the 2 guides we had accompanied our group would stop and talk about the forest and tell us about the plant life we were seeing.

Our walk in the woods going back up

New Zealand is fanatical about their forests and won’t allow any fruits or plants to be brought into the country. They also have shoe cleaning stations everywhere so that the outdoors people won’t bring in any bugs, eggs or parasites that might infect their woods. When you go on a trail they have brushes and spray bottles at the beginning of the trail to spray on your shoes. They are trying to protect their native trees which are the Kauri trees and a lot of the original houses were built with the Kauri wood.

The shoe watching station outside the ferry terminal

After the zip-lining they would drop you in town or take you back to the ferry and we asked to be dropped in town. It is a very small town with several cute eating places and some shops and mainly it is a beach town.

We decided to get something to eat, the more we can eat off the ship the better, I will talk more about the food on another sea day. While we were eating a storm blew in and it poured and then 5 minutes later the sun was out. Really crazy weather.

Storm blowing in Same view 5 minutes later

Our breakfast today at a roadside cafe with views of the water

We wandered town for a bit and then decided to take the forest walk back to the ferry which was about a mile and protected us some from the wind which was really strong.

A park we passed along the walk back.

We loved the color of this plant

We caught the 3:30 ferry back to Auckland and it was crazy rough, I mean white caps everywhere and I thought how crazy am I to get off a big ship that has been bouncing around get on a smaller ship that bounces around even more. We tried to sit outside but we were getting soaked so we moved inside and then another storm blew in and it got a little crazy for a few minutes.

This cute puppy was on the ferry with us.

Once back in town we wandered around and walked up to the sky tower and watched a couple of people jump off. That was the joke with the people we zip-lined with, now that I had done the zip-lining I was ready for the Sky Tower AND the Sydney bridge……..NOt even close. I am not even sure Kathy would do the Sky Tower.

I circled the person jumping form the tower

I was not ready to go back to the boat and for some reason I thought a movie would be a good thing to do so I looked up theaters and found one pretty close and the movie was starting at 6pm so we went to see Argylle which is a spy, comedy, thriller. It had a good cast and was entertaining although a bit convoluted. We got out of the movie at 8:40 and we were hungry but we also had to be back on the ship by 10pm because at 10pm they were going to move the ship to a different dock and if we weren’t on by then we would have to wait until 11:30 when re-docked and tied up and got the gangway in place.

We walked back and found a taco/nacho place open close to the pier and got take out and ate it on the harbor before getting back on the boat. When we got back to our room we met our new room steward, since our other one went home for his 2 month vacation, and we got a notice that we would not be moving tonight since it was too windy. Oh well we could have had a nice sit down meal but what we had was fine.

Tomorrow, Sunday for us, will be our last day in Auckland and the weather is supposed to be sunny and high of 72. The wind is supposed to die down and all on board at 5pm.