20170125: Gisborne- Eastern most city of the International Date Line

Wednesday, January 25, 2017 Gisborne, New Zealand

Gisborne's claim to fame is in being the easternmost city in the world with respect to the international date line, so people of Gisborne are the first to see the new day's sun rise. 

Since we were cruising off the east coast of New Zealand, we were actually able to catch the first rays of the sun even before the people of Gisborne. There were clouds on the horizon, which caused the sky to burn with a deep red glow, casting an eerie red reflection on the waves when the sun rose above the horizon. As it continued to rise, blues, grays and pinks replaced the deep red, eventually turning the sky blue and gray. A freighter was off our starboard stern several miles off, providing some perspective.

Gisborne has a shallow harbor, so the ship has to set anchor a mile or so outside the harbor. Tender boats are used to ferry passengers from the ship to shore. These are covered catamaran hull boats that are probably 40' long. They hold 80-100 passengers each, depending on how tightly you pack 'em in.

 

There are 4 of these boats, and it takes a while to get 2500 passengers to shore. The ride from the ship to shore takes 30 minutes each way, so we get less time to explore a port that requires tender service. After we had breakfast, we had to wait a half hour to board a tender and hit the dock about 10am, when the museums and shops opened. The temperature was pleasant in the low 70's and partly cloudy, so we were comfortable in shirt sleeves. The town is quite small, and you could walk the perimeter of the town including the entire waterfront in 2-3 hours. They have a busy Main Street, and an open air mall, where a Maori cultural demonstration was scheduled for 12:30. The town is proud of offering free Wifi (GizFizz Wifi), so we were looking forward to getting our pictures and emails updated. We were able to log on outside several municipal buildings (police station, library, visitor information center), but found the internet connection very poor- dial up speeds at best, with frequent disconnections. It was like being back at the City Limits Hotel. Bad internet must be something Aussies and Kiwi's just put up with. 

We pretty much walked around the whole town and saw a tiny museum honoring Maori who had served in past wars. These included Maori who had "won" the right to fight in the name of the Queen through treaty negotiations. The Maori, who were allowed to practice some traditional warfare techniques, suffered high casualties. There wasn't much more to remember about Gisborne. 

We were greeted by a small Maori dance school group at the dock, who did some traditional singing and dancing. This same troupe showed up at the open air mall, in front of the McCafe, to do the public demonstration that all the tour bus operators dropped off their passengers to see. 

We had walked there, and the place went from deserted to Macy's Day Parade crowds in minutes as multiple tour buses disgorged their passengers into the small mall. It was a cute show, kind of like the ones you see in shopping mall stages in Hawaii all the time. The girls all had the distinctive black tattoos around their lips and chins, which can be a bit disturbing to see at first. We don't know if they were real tattoos, or temporary tattoos for show make-up because all the girls, even the younger ones had the full treatment.

We headed back to the boat and arrived back on the ship late for lunch, but early for tea, so we picked up some sandwiches and salads at the International Cafe. This is primarily a coffee bar, but to compete with some of the 24hr food offerings of other cruise lines, they added a soup station, panini presses and a case stocked with donuts and jelly rolls in the morning, and pastries the rest of the day. You can get a light bite there anytime. We favored the Cuban and Chicken with Pineapple paninis, and they had a good shrimp salad and Greek salad that wasn't available in the main buffet.

We took a short nap and then had a light tea before the Egg drop contest, which was scheduled at 4:30. When we originally signed up, it looked like there would be plenty of competition, but as 4:30 rolled around, we were the only contestants who had built an entry. So it looked like we would win, so long as we hit the target, which was a 4'x4' square set about 4' out from the edge of the ledge, and produced an intact egg after the drop. The host tried to drag out the contest by interviewing me before and after the drop, but the whole thing took less than 15 minutes. Despite the fact that there was only one competing entry, there were probably a hundred spectators filling the atrium, hoping to see a lot of egg yolks being spilled. I dropped my device from deck 7, down to deck 5, or about 35'. The modified pulp drink carrier landing pad and drag balloons worked perfectly in stabilizing the device so it hit pad first, and as the drink carrier collapsed on impact, it absorbed shock and prevented a bounce on impact, keeping the device in the target. While I had high confidence in my technological design, I did not have a chance to test it, and I was very happy to see the egg emerge intact. We won a Princess sport water bottle. We were certain we would get another bottle of champagne or carabiner key chain, so that was perhaps an upgrade.

After dinner, we saw the stage show, which was a pair of jugglers who did a pretty good job with some juggling in the dark with glow in the dark and strobing items, as well as some dancing moves with lots of lifts, music and costumes. In a change of pace, they had the beautiful woman assistant do a few lifts of the male lead. They had won the Australia's Got Talent show in the past, and it was easy to see how they managed to do that.

They had a new game show called "The Liar's Club", where 3 staff celebrities where shown a word, and then each would try to explain what the word meant while convincing the audience that they were telling the truth. Each competing team was given a stack of cards with the team number on them. After each word, each team would give one of their cards to the celebrity on stage who you thought was telling the truth. The theatre was pretty full and there were about 20 teams competing. There were 4 words. The first was "Futz" and the proposed definitions were "German for passing wind", a version of soccer played on a smaller indoor field with small teams, or "a person getting blown down by a gust of wind". The second was "Haboob" and the last two words were Baldersnatch and Groak. We knew pretty much that Futz was fart (quit futzing around), Haboob was a desert sand storm, and that baby birds groak(begging for food from others), but had no idea what Baldersnatch meant, except that as the host was advancing the slides, she advanced too far, revealing for a tiny split second the answer, which Sharon caught as being a term in online communities to describe a mythical monster. When the host tallied up the scores, we were astounded that there was only one winner team that had gotten all 4 answers correct- and that was our team! Chalk up another bottle of champagne!

Jack and Sharon headed off to the piano bar, while Ben and Janet went topside to check out the movie under the stars, but it was cold , windy and raining lightly, so we just picked up a few snacks and headed to the cabin to watch "The Good Dinosaur" on TV. We also got details on disembarkation, reminding us how close to the end of our trip we were. Just Tauranga tomorrow, and then we wind up our cruise in Auckland the next day. This trip has just flown by!