Yellow Fish cruises: Day 25: Port Chalmers / Dunedin

We had the best day today. The BEST. New Zealand finally showed us her best side today, weather-wise, and we took full advantage of it. I am starting this post sitting in the Princess Theater awaiting the start of the show; I’m afraid that, if I wait until I get back to the cabin, it will never get published tonight. It’s always the case that the nights I have the most to say, I have the least amount of energy to say it.

G and I had decided that, if today’s weather was a repeat of what we endured yesterday in Akaroa, we would simply stay on the ship. We did recommend that Paul and Marlene, who had never before been here, at least go into Dunedin and visit the Otago Settlers Museum, the one that we enjoyed so much last year. That would have been a nice rainy day activity. But I pretty much refused to allow myself to be as simultaneously wet and chilled as I was yesterday.

I needn’t have been concerned. We awakened to a sunny day, and, though we had a pretty chilly start to the day (38F), it was predicted to warm up to around 60F. 60 and sunny is quite pleasant. After breakfast in the DaVinci Dining Room, we walked off the ship. As always, there are stacks and stacks of Monterrey Pine logs (the trees were imported from California) stacked in the Port of Otago in Port Chalmers, about 8 miles from the city of Dunedin. The logs are destined for Asia.

Monterrey Pine logs

(Paul’s photo)

We met up with Paul and Marlene in the terminal. There is a wonderful i-Site (the New Zealand term for the tourist information centers) located in the Port of Otago terminal. Although we were undecided about how we would spend our day, we knew we really wanted to take advantage of the first good weather day we’ve had in New Zealand. G and I had already been to Dunedin and taken a tour of the beautiful nearby Otago Peninsula, so we were looking for something a bit different that would still allow Paul and Marlene to see a little of Dunedin but also allow plenty of time to enjoy the gorgeous scenery on the peninsula.

The agent at the i-Site recommended the perfect tour. A company called Horizon Tours, headed by Lyndon who had been a ranger at the Royal Albatross Center at the very end of the Otago Peninsula and his brother-in-law James, a Maori with a deep understanding of their history and culture took 14 of us in two vans on their A Taste of Dunedin tour for NZ$ 120 per person.

Link to Horizon Tours

Princess Charles, with Lyndon, as Head Ranger at the Royal Albatross Centre, near the Taiaroa Lighthouse in 2005

We started off driving along the Otago Harbour to Dunedin to pick up two more tour participants, with our driver Lyndon telling us about the history of the area. Dunedin is the fourth largest city in New Zealand with a university specializing in training doctors and others in the medical field. Though I’d like to think I would love living in Akaroa, Dunedin is really a much more livable place, with everything one would need to live happily ever after.

Since we were going to be stopping in Dunedin on our return, after we picked up the other two participants, we wasted no time driving out to the Otago Peninsula. It was a picture perfect day, and kinda-sorta made up for yesterday’s nasty weather. Lyndon told us that they’ve had ten straight days of rain, and that today was the first day they’d seen the sun. So we’ve been unlucky, yes, but our luck finally turned today (and lasted exactly nine hours, which I’ll explain later).

I was delighted to be back on the Otago Peninsula. It offers beautiful harbor and ocean vistas, green rolling hills dotted with sheep and cattle and covered with that demon gorse (beautiful in full bloom) that was originally brought over from Scotland to form hedgerows but now covers every hillside with patches of yellow. I love it; the locals despise it.

Otago Harbour

The look of Scotland

Hillsides with golden gorse
(Paul’s photo)

We drove along the road that run down the center of the peninsula, but, because it’s so narrow, we often had views of water in both directions. Some of this looked very familiar, but we soon turned off the paved road and drove on narrow and rutted roads that would be well suited to a 4WD vehicle. We drove past tens of green hillsides dotted with sheep and lambs, others where cows were grazing, and finally came upon marshes which were home to at least ten different kinds of birds. Lyndon provided us with binoculars and we were happy to search for pied stilts and oystercatchers and swamp hens.

Old lime kiln

(Paul’s photo)

Ocean vista

Lion Rock in the distance in the Pacific Ocean

Harbor view

Pied stilt

I’m still trying to remember the name of this bird 😆

Finally we came to Cape Saunders, where we walked on a path bordered with sea grass to Ellen’s Beach, a wide and long stretch of white sand with Pacific Ocean waves crashing on shore. And there, in the center of the beach, king of his castle, was a 2-year old New Zealand sea lion. Apparently, there were no New Zealand sea lions in this area, and the ones still in existence were living on the Auckland and Campbell islands to the sub-Antarctic south, until one year when a pregnant mother chose to come ashore on the Otago Peninsula to deliver her pup, a girl. She returned two years later returned to deliver another girl, and so on and won on, and then, over time, all kinds of females were delivering their pups on the Otago Peninsula and the New Zealand sea lion had returned to New Zealand. It is the rarest sea lion in the world.

The male today out on quite a show, entertaining us by sitting up, lying down, rolling over and stretching, which pretty much exhausted his on land repertoire. We were an enthusiastic audience.

Letting us know that’s HIS beach

That look...like I’ll tolerate you if you stay far away

Ellen’s Beach

After that thrill, we stopped at spark where Lyndon and James served us a delicious picnic lunch that is normally reserved for their all day tour but somehow that tour got canceled, to our benefit. The day remained sunny and, not warm exactly, but comfortable enough that we were shedding jackets. What a difference from yesterday.

Our next stop was at a Otakou Marae, a Maori meeting place of spiritual significance and worship, and James talked to us a bit about Maori history and culture and the significance of the marae architectural features. The Maori had no written history, only oral history, largely through songs and stories until the European settlers arrived. Now they are struggling to ensure that their language is not lost, though it seems like their culture is well preserved, certainly more than other indigenous cultures in the Americas and Australia.

Otakou Marae

Photo by Joe Spurgoen found online because there were

cars parked in front of the marae for an event today.

During our return to Dunedin, Lyndon talked about the Polynesian migration, which has interested G and I since our first trip to French Polynesia. Lyndon explained how New Zealand (Aotearoa in Maori) was the last place settled in Polynesia and one of the last places settled on earth. They believe that the Maori arrived from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, and before that from the Marquesas Islands. And the origin of the Polynesian Migration has been narrowed down to Taiwan and China. Fascinating stuff.

Back in Dunedin we stopped at the Railway Station (the most photographed building in New Zealand) and drove past Baldwin St. (the steepest street in the world, though a town in Wales tried to steal that honor last summer until they were disproved). The last time we were here, G ran up Baldwin St. erasure of course he did.

Dunedin Railway Station

Taieri Gorge rail cars

Once back in Port Chalmers, we all decided we had had such a great time together that we adjourned our tour in a local pub, Lyndon too. It must have been a Very Special Occasion because even I drank, a beer flight with four specialty beers (that I also shared all around, so it wasn’t as bad as it seems).

Beer flight from the Portsider in Port Chalmers

We didn’t get back on the ship until nearly 4:30pm, and had time only to wash hands before we met in the Elite Lounge to start seeing each others’ photos from the day. G and I made it to dinner by 5:30pm, ate quickly and were bundled up on the Promenade Deck as we sailed past the Taiaroa Lighthouse at Taiaroa Head on the south side of Otago Harbour. Then we went to tonight’s Princess Theater show by Australian vocalist John Stephan. He has performed a Roy Orbison tribute act all over the world, including for two years in Las Vegas. I am not a huge Roy Orbison fan (Pretty Woman excepted) but G is, and John Stephan has an incredible voice, sounding just like Roy Orbison. How he speaks in Australian and sings in American, I’ll never know.

Taiaroa Head Lighthouse

A sail away bonus: a beautiful rainbow (and the start of a double)

Day 25 dinner menu, page 1

Day 25 dinner menu, page 2

Day 25 dinner menu, page 3

Roasted tofu starter with kimchee, made entree-sized

It was 8:30pm as we left the Princess Theater, and we noticed it was still light outside. That reminded me of one of our favorite things about cruising down here during our winter…these long days and even longer twilights. We braved the wind and chill to go out on the Promenade Deck just in time to see one of the prettiest sunsets (one of the few sunsets) of the cruise so far. It was spectacular.

It doesn’t get much better than this

Then, to warm up, we went to the International Café (and got seats!) where G had a hot chocolate and I had a decaf cappuccino and we listened to the Anima String Duo performing in the Piazza. It had been a perfect day…

…except for the announcement Captain Lawes made about the 60 knot winds and 25 foot swells we are expecting as we cross the Tasman Sea over to Australia. Oh boy. To try to miss the worst of the storm, we are cutting our time in Fiordland National Park tomorrow to just three hours, and cruising only in Milford Sound. Oh boy. It’s certainly preferable to missing it altogether, and G and I are lucky to have several more opportunities to see it this season. I’m a little more concerned about those 25 foot swells in the Tasman Sea. We’ll have several more opportunities to experience those this season, too.