A few of us usually are not apparent cruisers. I’ve an irrational concern of demise by drowning and might’t bear the considered consuming three meals a day, every single day.
So the prospect of a 16-day voyage spherical New Zealand to Australia is alarming. Will I survive? Or will I disappear overboard, laden with meals, the heavyweight sufferer of some marine catastrophe?
New Zealand is a residing geography lesson – a rustic strewn with mountains, fjords, forests, glaciers, and lakes, house to the dolphin, whale, penguin, albatross, seal and sea-lion (there’s a distinction: the latter eat the previous for breakfast).
A spot to pause: The tiny port of Picton is a gateway to the winelands of New Zealand’s Marborough area
Residence, too, to the attractive blue agapanthus flower and the crimson-flowered pohutukawa, the New Zealand Christmas tree. And you will get oysters in all places.
It is a lengthy journey to New Zealand, so be sure you discover someplace to recuperate.
The Boatshed on Waiheke Island, a brief ferry experience from Auckland, is ideal – a boutique lodge on the water the place you’ll be able to start your acquaintance with this faraway land.
I am taken on an exhilarating experience across the bay on a Harley Davidson – 1800cc of shiny, macho steel. ‘Have you ever ridden an HD earlier than?’ asks my hunky ‘chauffeur’. No, however I used to have a Lambretta 125.
Coming again for extra: A excessive proportion of individuals on the Seabourn Odyssey are returning passengers
‘Simply lean after I lean,’ he says. I cling to his leathered waist and watch the world go by at velocity.
My cruising worries start to evaporate after I meet the crew of Seabourn Odyssey.
‘Welcome house,’ they are saying as we embark – a curious selection of phrases, till you realise greater than half the passengers are returnees.
In our ship-shape suite, every thing is sparklingly clear (as a girl who enjoys scrubbing her entrance steps, I discover this stuff).
Captain Prepare dinner charted the shoreline of New Zealand 245 years in the past. In addition to unpredictable seas, he feared scurvy, brought on by a scarcity of Vitamin C, which ends up in suppurating wounds, lack of tooth and in the end demise.
No hazard of that on the Odyssey. I am unable to consider one other interval in my life after I’ve eaten so effectively, so persistently. Prepare dinner pulped vegetation to make vitamin beer and fed his males sauerkraut; I sip a glass of champagne and nibble a canapé.
That night time the whoosh of waves towards the hull lulls me to sleep.
Taken for a experience: Sue took a tour of Waiheke island in speedy two-wheeled fashion – on a Harley Davidson
The ship has 450 passengers, 11 decks, 4 eating places, a spa, health centre, swimming pool, scorching tubs in all places and a theatre bigger than Prepare dinner’s ship.
On day one, we disembark andhead for Rotorua and its unusual geothermal swimming pools.
‘Tours4Matures’ says a minibus signal — a reminder of the age profile. We rent a automobile and drive to see effervescent mud, scorching volcanic craters and hissing ochre and inexperienced waters.
However why would you’re taking a shower in mud and threat getting it the place even the cleaning soap cannot attain? We get misplaced driving again and almost miss the crusing. Independence comes at a worth.
Crossing the Prepare dinner Strait to South Island, we anchor on the tiny port of Picton and take an tour into the Marlborough Excessive Nation, to a distant sheep station the place we meet Hailey Pitts.
She and her husband Jeremy farm 20,000 acres and rear 5,000 sheep. It is a exhausting life, however their shining eyes are proof that they adore it.
As we cruise by Queen Charlotte Sound, mentioned to be Captain Prepare dinner’s favorite anchorage, peace envelops me.
I sit on our veranda watching the solar fade throughout the islands round us. What a great distance from the distant outside of that sheep station.
Idyllic: Waiheke island sits on Auckland’s doorstep – however feels far faraway from New Zealand’s largest metropolis
Ah, effectively – what’s for dinner? In Akaroa, we see Hector’s dolphin, the smallest and rarest on the planet.
In Port Chalmers, we climb as much as a memorial to Captain Robert Scott. He set sail from there in 1910 on his illfated journey to the South Pole.
The sundown is spectacular that night time and I consider Captain Scott and his companions because the crimson ball within the sky disappears, forsaking a path of sunshine, first pink, then orange, then burgundy, till lastly blackness falls. (Making an attempt to explain a sundown is like making an attempt to explain intercourse – it all the time sounds trite. Let’s simply say it was shifting.)
On south, till we hit the final land earlier than the South Pole, the attractive Stewart Island. Due west – nothing however sea till the tip of South America. Due east – ditto. It is time to flip and head out to Australia.
It is almost 1,300 miles from the underside of New Zealand throughout the Tasman Sea to Melbourne. Gale drive winds imply the ship could make solely gradual progress because it tries to keep away from pitching closely into the waves. My irrational fears return.
The crossing takes three lengthy days and nights, However I come to understand how an enormous ship just like the Odyssey can deal with such seas. I calm down into the camaraderie that develops on board, and in the end we’re cruising into Melbourne after which alongside the coast to Sydney.
Calm comforts: Picton is a haven for sailors who’ve crossed the usually tough waters of the Prepare dinner Strait
At 6am on a lovely summer time’s morning, the Opera Home and the Harbour Bridge welcome us to a metropolis stuffed with promise. That afternoon, I watch from my lodge window because the Seabourn Odyssey units sail as soon as extra, again to Auckland.
Now another person is in suite 722. Another person is being made to really feel it is a voyage designed just for them. I confess to feeling proprietorial and never a bit emotional. I have to be a cruiser.
