Bay of Islands

          It’s a good thing that Peter Jackson is from New Zealand and had his homeland in mind before presenting his idea for filming The Lord of the Rings to prospective studios. It’s also a good thing that New Line Cinema could see his vision and say, “This is not one movie, it’s at least three!” If you’ve seen this epic movie, you have an idea of just some of the things that we will be able to see here in New Zealand.

                                      Most of the grander scenes were filmed on the South Island which we will just visit the northern tip of. But throughout this incredible place you can envision what Peter had in mind before he started filming. We will attempt to show you what we can from our limited excursion experiences.

                                      We arrive first at the Bay of Islands, the site of New Zealand’s beginnings in the modern era. By that I mean the early 1800’s, The Māori people arrived about 900 years before that and were quite settled before Captain James Cook came and said “Hi!” The colonists soon followed, along with the customs and needs that they brought from the homelands. The British signed the Treaty of Waitangi in a field directly at the place where we disembarked later in the morning., back in1840.  This treaty with the Māori granted them ownership of their lands and other properties and also gave them rights as British subjects while Britain gained all of New Zealand. You will be pleased to know that the present-day descendants of those first settlers treat the Māori with a ton of respect, know a lot of (and use) their language, and admit to the fact they were, in fact, here first.

                                                This is another “Tender” port, meaning that we need to be shuttled back and forth between the ship and the mainland pier, which in this case is about a mile and a half away! This means a one-way trip of about a half-hour or so.

                                      We can use only four of our Lifeboats as tenders as these four are the only ones with two engines which not only is a safety feature, but two engines are quite critical when it comes to facilitating docking and rendezvousing with the ship. Two engines allow the coxswain to put one in forward, while reversing the other, hence helping to turn the tender without having to use the rudder (which is ineffectual at a slow speed with no water passing over it).

                                                It is going to be a long day.

                             But…. the sail into the Bay of Islands was spectacular! We had several dolphins come over to the ship to greet us, but they were difficult to understand because of their heavy New Zealand accents.

                   We snuck onto one of the earlier Tenders, just because. 😊

Well….. it was going to be probably another hour until our tender was going to be called, so I just kind of “hung around” the gangway area until they needed a few extra folks to fill in spots that were left after the boat was filled with the Official Excursions leaving at that time. We had some time on the front end of our excursion as it did not depart the pier in town until around 1:00 pm (it was presently about 10:30 am) and we wanted to have enough time to get into the small town of Paihia (pronounced Pie-HE-ah) before our tour left.

                             We were booked on “A Leisurely Cruise of the Bay of Islands, Lunch, and a Hour in Russel.” That is a perfect description of what we experienced yesterday afternoon. The Captain/Owner had built this barge style craft himself. It is a purpose-built vessel, perfectly designed for what it’s used for. There are even “tables” that slide down from the ceiling on stainless steel poles so that we did not need to hold the plates of food on our laps.

                             Perhaps the best part of this trip was getting to know some other passengers. The captain made us all introduce ourselves, which at first felt like we were back in kindergarten but after a few wines and beers that is exactly what we were acting like (except me!). We became friendly enough, and had nice conversations with at least two other couples, enough to invite them to our table for a future dinner with us. One of the couples, Sally and Paul, actually out-do us in the motorhome and living department! They live on their sailboat in California and keep two Sprinter Campers…. one here in the Staes and the other one is in Europe!

                             The rest of our little ride was quite nice. It is obvious from the number of sailboats the New Zealand is enamored with sailing as a nation. As a matter of fact, they are the current holders of the America’s Cup, and have been for some years now after finally breaking the USA’s grip on it. The America’s Cup is the oldest continuously contested sporting event in the world, having begun in 1851. We held onto it until the 1980’s when New Zealand finally beat us. We won it back a few yarrs later, but they came storming back and have kept it ever since.

                             Our tour of the Bay of Islands covered a miniscule part of it…….. this place is huge!

Our eventual destination for the remainder of the afternoon was the delightful little town of Russel. Russel was the first capital of New Zealand, but you would never know it by its now bucolic, lazy seaside lifestyle. It is now a comfortable destination for folks on vacation, which is NOW, as it is summer down here! It is also one of the Marlin Catching Capitals of the World and has nestled into its main drag, one of the oldest Marlin fishing clubs in the world. The author Zane Grey, after publishing The Angler’s El Dorado in 1926, is credited with highlighting the fishing of this part of New Zealand and the rest of his “fishing buddies” (readers!) in the world followed him here.

                                      Anyway, we discovered a little ice cream place right near the Fishing club. Good stuff! We need just a tad of desert after our lunch on board. They prepare and cook everything on the stern of the boat. There is a galley of sorts back there to cook the likes of fresh caught fish of the day, local venison, and of course, New Zealand Lamb!

                                      After re-boarding the SS Food Barge, we started back to the pier in Waitangi to catch our shuttle back to the ship.

                                      We were the last shuttle to leave the pier, but no worries, mate! We were on a Princess Excursion, so the BIG Boat waits for us!

                                      We did arrive at our table late, but our friends Darla and Sandra (the Girls) were waiting patiently as was our award winning servers, Richard and Kevin.

                             Yes, it was in fact, a long, (but really nice!) day.