Waitangi, Bay of Islands, New Zealand
January 29, 2024 - We have arrived in New Zealand! We anchored in the harbor of Waitangi and used the tender boats to go ashore. It was a slightly longer tender ride (30 minutes) than in French Polynesia, but was a beautiful ride. We did a bus tour that took us to the Stone Storehouse, the oldest building in New Zealand and also saw on the site a “waka” the canoe like boats that were used by the Maori tribes for years. After that we went to Rainbow falls, and then continued on to the town of Kawakawa, which is best known for its toilets. For real. Apparently it is the only bathroom designed with a tree growing in the middle of it. You can only ask why. We only had rain for a few minutes, and it was while we were on the bus, so the weather couldn’t have been nicer for us.
After the tour ended, we took the shuttle bus into the town and looked around the shops and had a nice lunch sitting on the shore looking at the water (as opposed to all the meals we had the past five days looking at the water from the water!). We then walked back the 1.5 miles to the tender pier. The tender ride back to the boat was quite a ride. The wind picked up just as we were leaving the pier, which made maneuvering away from it difficult. They waited 5 minutes and then proceeded. But as we neared the ship the wind really picked up again, it started raining harder, and the current really shifted. We were unable to “dock” to the ship, and they had all the crew members who usually ride on top of the tender boats, climb down into the boat — as we were probably a bit top heavy and it was less safe for them as we were rocking quite a bit. We sailed back away from the ship and idled/rocked in the water for what was probably 5 minutes but seemed much longer, before they made another attempt. A successful attempt this time. After we boarded the ship and got to our room, we were out on our balcony and the weather had completely changed, the water was calm again and the next tender boat docked with ease. It is amazing how quickly the weather and the sea conditions can change - especially in these harbors.
