Day 79: 20231211 Monday, December 11, 2023 Reunited with the Royal Princess
When we awoke and opened our blinds, we were a little concerned that we did not see the Royal Princess at the Queens Wharf, just down the street where the Golden Princess had docked in 2017 and Grand Princess had docked during our Transpacific cruise. However, the driver that picked us up at the Auckland airport yesterday thought the ship would be docking on the Prince’s Wharf, which is literally across the street from the Social Hotel, but visibility was blocked by the Hilton Hotel at the head of that pier. Ben then checked the Boat Watch app, and was relieved to see that it reported the Royal Princess at the Prince’s Wharf in Auckland. We got our suitcases out the doors at 7am and headed down for breakfast. As we exited the elevator doors and walked into the hotel lobby, we could see the massive white and blue bow of the Royal Princess peeking out around the side of the Hilton.
As we headed into the restaurant, one of the couples was heading out and said that the IDNZ representative was walking them over to the ship’s excursions staff because their excursion was scheduled to meet at 7:45. We had breakfast and saw our luggage get loaded into a MSocial Hotel van to be taken across the ship to be loaded onto the ship. Instead of waiting for the IDNZ representative to return, we checked out of the hotel and walked across the street ourselves and saw some people with Princess Medallions hitting the sidewalks, so we just headed upstream and eventually found the IDNZ representative talking with the excursions staff, who were easy to pick out since they wear white officer’s uniforms. The Hotel General Manger for the Royal Princess, Helmut Liekauf, actually greeted us personally and apologized profusely for all we had been through since being left behind in Picton. He personally handed us off to the person coordinating the arriving tour buses for the excursions and got us first on our excursion bus. The rest of the passengers arrives about 5 minutes later.
We were booked on a Piha Bush and Beach Eco Tour. There were 11 participants and we were on a minibus with over 20 seats so we could spread out comfortably. Our guide Kevin and driver Milton were very pleasant and personable. They live in the Piha area and know it intimately. They explained we were going to the west coast of Auckland from the ship’s position, which is on the east coast of Auckland. Fortunately, Auckland is situated on the narrowest part of New Zealand, so the mountains on the west coast are just a 90 minute drive from the cruise ship docks in Auckland.
While the Southern Alps on the South Island were formed by uplifting of the seafloor by collision of tectonic plates, the mountains of the North Island were formed by volcanic activity. Many of the geographic features round Auckland are residual volcanic craters and cinder cones. Auckland was also close enough to the equator that it was not subjected to the glacial forces that the Southern Island was subjected to. It is also close enough to the equator to be in a subtropical zone with tropical microclimates. We drove through areas that had once been densely planted with vineyards, but that industry subsequently moved to Marlborough on the north end of the South Island, where we had spent much of the last 3 days stranded in, because there was too much humidity and precipitation to be ideal for producing top quality wine grapes. The backbone of Auckland’s economy was built on the timber industry and commerce.
In its earliest days, Auckland was settled to take advantage of its Kauri forests for ship building. Kauri is uniquely resistant to shipworm due to a natural insecticide. Kauri wood is also ideally suited for ship masts because of the way the trees grow with a very long straight limbless trunk. The wood not only is very strong but also more flexible than Oak so under severe weather conditions, a ship’s mast made of Kauri would easily outlast Oak, which would snap under the same stress and strain. Unfortunately, Kauri is a slow growing hardwood so the forest was depleted rapidly. Colonizers eventually switched to forestry management with fast growing soft woods like California Monterey Pine and other species that could be sustainably harvested.
Our first stop was the Arataki Visitor Center where we could enjoy views of the Manukau harbor and beyond to the Tasman Sea. The visitor center also had a number of exhibits on Maori culture and New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna. They had a life-sized model of an extinct Moa, and a stuffed Kiwi in a display case. Kiwi birds are nocturnal, and also quite endangered. Most New Zealanders have never seen a Kiwi in the wild. We Americans are fortunate that the Bald Eagle was brought back from the brink and is now thriving to the point where seeing one where we live on in Washington is a regular occurrence.
Several movies and TV shows were filmed in the Auckland area including The Piano and Xena Warrior Princess. Interestingly enough Steven Spielberg unleashed an army of interns to capture hundreds of Delena Cancerides Huntsman spiders from yards in the suburb of Avondale, which we drove through, for use in the movie Arachnophobia. These spiders had hitched a ride from Australia to New Zealand in a shipment of lumber and are confined to the microclimate of Avondale for some reason. They are large and scary looking, but harmless to humans.
Piha beach is probably where surfing was introduced to New Zealand, and greatly popularized by a reality TV show Piha Rescue, which is New Zealand’s answer to Bondi Beach Rescue, or our Baywatch. Getting around the area requires specialized local knowledge because a bomb cyclone a year ago dumped a month’s worth of rain in a single day, washing out numerous roads and causing multiple landslides. Kevin pointed out damage from the storm as well as unusual oddities such as a wild banana plant that had once been on the shoulder of the road, but which is now thriving about 30 feet down a steep embankment where it landed right side up in a sunnier spot. There was also a narrow land slide that ran right down the border between two homes, but spared the homes somehow. The geography of the area is very steep with multiple fingers of land extending out into the Tasman Sea along that coastline.
We walked to a nice look out of the coastline with a Birdseye view of Piha beach far below. We then drove down to the beach. There is a huge monolith called lion rock because its profile looks a bit like a lion in profile from certain angles. It reminded us of the enormous rock at Cannon Beach in Oregon. The beach itself is made of very fine dark grey/black sand. This sand contains a lot of magnetic filings. Just taking a magnet and passing it through the sand yields a surprising amount of iron fillings. This can also make the sand dangerously hot to walk on in the full sun. Fortunately for us, it was overcast. Many people took off their shoes and walked in the Tasman Sea including Price and Ciara but you have to be very watchful for sneaker waves. A few people came back to the bus a bit wetter than they had expected. We had a light tea consisting of fruit juice, Anzac biscuits (very much like oatmeal cookies with coconut) and Manuka honey. There were numerous Manuka bushes along the trail we had taken for the beach lookout point.
We next drove to another trailhead to get a closer look at the subtropical rain forest and some large Kauri trees. There is a disease affecting Kauri trees called Kauri Dieback disease. It is thought to be caused by a fungus like pathogen that can be spread by trampling on the roots with contaminated shoes, so the trail heads have decontamination stations where you have to brush the bottoms of your shoes and spray a disinfectant solution on the soles of your shoes. It reminded us of the decontamination procedure we had to go through on the Viking Polaris whenever we made landfall in Antarctica to prevent bio contamination.
Janet and Ben had seen a lot of the subtropical rain forest plants on other excursions in Australia, but Price and Ciara had not. There are also some species unique to New Zealand like the iconic silver fern, and a unique but very slow growing palm tree that the Māori call nīkau, which means no nuts because even though it may look a bit like a coconut tree it never produces a coconut. It can take 200 years to reach 30’ in height. Its tiny berries can take a year to ripen but only the unripe early berries are edible. British would use the ripe berries as shot in their muskets to take wood pigeons, which ironically do feed on the berries. The trail took us to a Kauri tree that was probably 12’ in diameter at its base. The trunk is remarkably straight and free of branches. No wonder it was valued for timber despite is slow growth.
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The hikes were easy walks, and we were blessed with ideal weather- warm, sunny and with a slight breeze. It was much less humid than the places in Australia’s Queensland and Northern Territory where we had seen other semitropical and tropical forests.
At the end of our tour, most of the participants were dropped off at the ship while we rode the bus a little further to the Skycity center in Auckland’s CBD to catch the Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus. Unlike yesterday, we were actually able to board a bus and rode it through its entire route which went as far as Mt Eden, The Auckland Zoo, and Bastion Point. There were several free gardens and view points at several stops, but we were short on time, so we just stayed on the bus and listened to the commentary which was loud and clear enough to be useful, despite a large number of very chatty and rude Chinese tourists who ignored the commentary and seem only to be able to communicate in a very loud voice at all times.
It was with a sense of great relief when we were able to scan ourselves back onto the ship and find our suitcases waiting for us. It was in inconvenience to have to re-unpack our suitcases for the last 3 days of this cruise but we did start organizing and sorting items that were no longer needed into suit cases ready for the flight home.
We had dinner in the dining room. It seems like between the scheduled Milford Sound/Queenstown/Dunedin overland excursion and the unplanned extended stay in Blenheim and Auckland that we have actually not had many meals at all in our assigned dining. They had a New Zealand Louise cake dessert, which was a jam/flowerless bar with a texture like a coarse fruit leather, and covered with a hard merengue. We had hoped it would be as good as the Lamington cake or Pavlova but it was a disappointment. The texture and flavor of the bar part was just not appealing. After dinner, Janet watched some of the vocalist/guitarist Patrick McMahon, who did Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond songs, while Ben caught the end of TV Themes trivia and the kids relaxed in their rooms after prowling around the various food venues for after dinner snacks and desserts.
Tomorrow the ship arrives at the Bay of Islands, where the ship will use tenders to go ashore. We are booked on an excursion to see more Kauri forest and a glow worm cave. We hope the glow worm caves will be as magical as the ones we saw in Waitomo. That will also be Price and Ciara’s first exposure to glow worms.
