Wellington & Napier, NZ

November 14, 2012 Wednesday

We were in our first New Zealand port, Wellington, yesterday.  We took a Princess tour and went to the Maori  National Museum, Te Papa, and it was great, as fine as advertised.  Our Maori guide, Richard, was the best, giving us an idea of how the Maori arrived, survived and carry on today.  Afterward we went up the cable car to a lookout above the city with a Botanical Garden and a Planetarium. 

As the ship left port, we cruised close to land and the land looked very much like the hills around Yakima, if they were moved to the water.

On Wednesday, we were in Napier, NZ.  Napier is a smallish town, surviving as a very active port and a tourist center.  There have been 75 cruise ships in port this year.  The attraction to the town dates to a two and a half minute earthquake in 1931.  Much of the area was leveled.  The interesting thing is that  they rebuilt the place in the style of the day.  Art Deco.  (We mentioned another town as having this style.  Forget it.  This takes the cake.)  Words won’t do it justice, but we will bring back photos.

We finally quit trying to post photos via our ship satellite internet.  They just don’t seem to go out and eat up our Internet minutes.  We have purchased an Australian photo album and will bring it back full, as well as having a slide show for computers.

We have two more ports to visit, Tauranga and Auckland, and then will have three sea days on the way back to Sydney, the airport, the long flight and home.

Colleen and John