We're Back in the South Island- Blenheim; Part 1

Real-time

Our first night in the South Island was spent parked beside a vineyard, on the side of a river and all by ourselves. It was good to back.

Damfam Vineyard

But first we had to cross Cook Strait. It rained for much of the night and with a 9am sailing and 13kms to travel from Petone in the morning rush hour, we were pleased when we were ready to leave ahead of schedule. There was a moment of panic though when we found the exit gate at the Workingmen's Club locked. Luckily we were able to squeeze the rig around the sharp corner of the building and exit through the entry gate which was open. In typical Evans style we were first in the queue at the closed gate just before 7am. And first in line to board (although they took the row beside us first).

With a winter storm behind us and another one forecast ahead of us, I had picked a small window of calm weather to cross and thankfully my careful scanning of wind warnings and wave height predictions proved correct and we had a very smooth crossing even though it rained all the way. The mist hung low over the hills as we cruised down Queen Charlotte Sound and when I did venture outside just to check I wasn't missing anything, a pod of dolphins surfaced nearby and rode the wake for a short time! Great timing.

We took the Interislander Lounge Plus option ($45pp) for the second time, which we're finding is a great way to travel. All food & drink is free (we had breakfast, morning tea & lunch), there's a comfy lounge, free wifi and no children. The cost is not much more than we'd spend anyway because we usually purchase breakfast and a coffee.

From Picton we drove the short distance to Damfam Vineyard (CAP #7011) on the banks of  Wairau River near Blenheim. 

We were the only ones staying and it was a lovely peaceful start to our South Island travels. The cooler morning temperatures also reminded us of the cold winter ahead.

 I was also pleased to be back 'Out There' in the open shooting magnificent sunsets again.

We were thrilled to see a bird feeding platform beside the vineyard & not too far from the van. Our hosts feed the local hawks regularly over winter and occasionally during summer to encourage them to stay and scare off the small birds that feed on the grapes during the season. 

Australasian Hawks/Kahu are notoriously shy and are often very hard to get close up photos of. I was able to sneak up on them a couple of times as they were otherwise occupied. They also didn't like eating off the high platform, in the wild it's safer for them to eat on the ground and they can also hide from other birds after their food. Occasionally they'd manage to pull pieces off the carcass and carry it off to the long grass or between the rows of vines to eat.

I followed the Wairau River down to the end of the road where it flows into a huge lagoon and crosses the Wairau Bar into Cloudy Bay. Alongside the track the rusting hull of the TSS Kennedy (1864-1929) provides a good lookout for the local flock of Pied Shags/Kawau. The Kennedy was scuttled to form part of the breakwater for what was once a wharf; rotting piles are now all that's left.

I walked to the end of the breakwater and onto the rocks and was amazed at the amount of water flowing out to sea. I'm not a fan of rushing water and here was no exception. It was very scary watching how fast it was travelling, swirling around in angry pools and catching on the rocks just below me before rushing out over the bar.

Next I went to check out the mouth of the Wairau Diversion which was completed in 1963 to help with Wairau River's flood control. The Diversion carries the water directly across country to the sea whereas the river meanders for several kilometres before it reaches the Bar. There's a large freedom camping site at the Diversion and during the whitebait season the area is full of seasoned campers.

As I was leaving the reserve I spotted alot of activity out in the middle of the river. A large flock of shags; I counted at least 30, were swimming downstream, ducking and diving, chasing & fighting their way very fast towards the outlet. 

They were chasing a school of fish (they look like yellow-eyed mullet) and nearly everytime a shag surfaced it had a large fish in it's bill. And if it didn't it chased its neighbour across the water for his. These are not good photos, I was quite a distance from the birds and they were moving very fast in the flow but look at the photo bottom left, 3 birds with a fish each and one shag behind chasing fast.

Back on the main road at Tuamarina is a memorial and information board in a road side reserve. In 1843 a nortorious & tragic incident occured here. Known as The Wairau Affray or The Wairau Incident it was the first significant armed conflict between Maori & British settlers after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Twenty two Europeans (18 killed as utu after surrendering) and four Maori were killed in the conflict. Click on the photo to enlarge if you wish to read about the incident.

Afterwards I crossed the road and drove up to the cemetery on the hill above the memorial to find another memorial to some of those killed (I'm not sure if they are buried here). Be warned if you do visit, it's a tiny narrow road with a couple of  sharp corners & not suitable for anything other than a car. The multi layered cemetery itself must be one of the most well tended and tidy cemeteries I've visited, it also has a stunning outlook over the farmland and vineyards below and out to the coast.

I found another interesting memorial opposite the primary school at the bottom of the hill as I left the cemetery. Beside the memorial were a couple of bench seats where people could sit quietly or perhaps read a book, very fitting considering Eileen Duggan was a poet & writer. It's always interesting finding out where New Zealand's famous sons & daughters have come from. Not that I'd heard of Eileen before seeing the memorial, but then it's fun to learn of their history.

The Tides Run Up The Wairau – Eileen Duggan 

The tides run up the Wairau 

That fights against their flow. 

My heart and it together 

Are running salt and snow. 

For though I cannot love you, 

Yet, heavy, deep, and far, 

Your tide of love comes swinging, 

Too swift for me to bar. 

Some thought of you must linger, 

A salt of pain in me 

For oh what running river 

Can stand against the sea? 

After a pleasant few days at Damfam Vineyard we headed off towards Kaikoura, keen to drive SH1 for the first time since it had reopened after repairs following the devastating November 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. 

We did have to pull over for a photo stop just south of Blenheim though. The last few times we have passed by this historic Cob Cottage it has been surrounded by scaffolding as it was painted (it survived the earthquake undamaged). The cottage was built between 1854 & 1868 for the local Riverlands runholder and has been used as a farm cottage, shearers’ quarters, school, a store room and hay shed during its lifetime.

To be continued...

Nine Weeks In Napier- Part 4; City at Sea

Catch-up; and I've been waiting a long while to post this one. 

Remember I said on one of my Tauranga blogs, I'd love to see 'Ovation of the Seas'? Well it just happened that she was due in Napier a few days after we arrived.

I thought I'd head to the Bluff Hill Lookout to see her arrive, the lookout not only overlooks the Port of Napier, it has wide sweeping views out over Hawke Bay; south to Cape Kidnappers and north to Mahia Peninsula.

Due to the congestion around the lookout caused by sightseers on the narrow roads, during her last (and first) visit to Napier, all the immediate roads were closed to traffic. This meant a walk of about 1.5kms up hill and down dale to reach the lookout. Ovation wasn't due to arrive until 7am but I got there well in advance so I could see her come around the Cape and head across the Bay to the port.

There were quite a number of ships and commercial fishing boats at anchor offshore, I guess they had to wait their turn until after Ovation had berthed and her few thousand passengers has disembarked and gone for the day.

Once Ovation reached the breakwater two tugs steamed out to meet her. 

Here's something random for you; I have a personal connection with Napier Port's breakwater. Some of the rubble used to create the breakwater, once surrounded my childhood swimming pool. Much of breakwater rubble was once part of the Park Island 'Old People's Home' which collapsed in the 1931 Napier Earthquake. It then became the HB Hospital Board Farm which Dad managed for over 20 years. 

Most of the ruins were bulldozed over the sides of Park Island though some of the concrete foundations were left behind. Dad layed a floor and sealed one of these large concrete foundation squares to form our swimming pool. Many years later all the rubble (including the swimming pool) was transported to the Port to form the breakwater extension. You can read more about the farm (which is now Napier's Western Hills Cemetery) in this blog I did on a Living Memory

My sister Gaelyn, in the concrete foundation swimming pool

Moving right along (don't forget to click on the photos to view them in more detail)....

Logs waiting to be exported look like piles of toothpicks.

At 168,666 tonne, Ovation of the Seas is the fourth biggest cruise ship in the world and the biggest ship to visit New Zealand. She carries 4905 passengers and 1500 crew. 

Once the tugs reached her, they helped her maneuver around, ready to be backed into port.

There was a strong wind blowing and a low tide, the bow and/or stern thrusters on the ship stirred up the sea bed. 

There was about a 40 minute delay as they waited for the wind to drop and the tide to lift a little before Ovation...

...was carefully backed into her berth

A very long line up of tour and shuttle buses patiently waited to escort the passengers off the wharf...

Napier Port's tugs look like little egg cups compared with Tauranga's tugs and especially as they bobbed about in the churned up water.

Some passengers chose to stay and make use of the onboard facilities. The stand up surfing pool was popular and as soon as the ship had docked the waves started rolling. Ovation also has a sky diving simulator, rock climbing wall, dodgem cars, a circus school and an observation gondola on a hydraulic arm that rises 90 metres above the ship. I left before that was raised; you can see it in the photo above, at the front of the ship.

And wouldn't you know it, after closing the surrounding roads and making me walk all that way, there were only about a dozen people at the lookout and half of those were locals out on their morning strolls. And the only vehicles that made it to the top contained council workers who'd talked their way through the cordon!

One last photo looking out over the old port settlement of Ahuriri and the Ahuriri estuary to the hills of Poraiti behind. Before the 1931 earthquake, the inner harbour reached the base of the hills, the seabed rose 2 metres during the 'quake exposing most of the middle ground you can see here.

Perfume Point (a popular freedom camping spot in Napier) can be see on the right , the finger of land sticking out into the bay.

Footnote- I'll be out of internet range for a couple of weeks or so, so apologies but no blogs for awhile.

Cruise Ship Parade

Catch-up; Well that was a very long week. So much for getting my blogs up-to-date. Much to my (and David's) horror, my laptop crashed just after the last blog and it has taken all week to resurrect it. 

Initially David spent 2 days trying to get a spark out of it and when that didn't happen, we took it to an IT shop. They were able to extract the data which, because of  the amount of photo files I have waiting in the wings, took them over 12 hours to download before they could even look at the laptop. They also failed to bring it back to life.

Back home David worked on it for another day and finally, just as I was thinking a new laptop was in the wings, managed to get it going, albeit with no data and an older Windows 8 programme. Don't ask me what the issue was, it flies right over the top of my head. All I know is that David has earnt this year's full quota of brownie points in one go and I am a very lucky lady to have a husband who has quite a bit of computer knowledge and a hell of a lot of patience. 

Thankfully I had a complete backup, although there were a few bits and bobs that had happened in the previous week which I didn't have but was able to extract from the data the IT shop managed to download. Of course backups are fine but there's still heaps of work to do loading and sorting out data, home screens, icons, other programmes, favourites and bookmarks etc in the new empty Windows programme. I've spent the last few days doing all those things you take for granted when you open up your computer to a familiar screen. 

(And I spoke too soon, it crashed again as I was writing this blog, but this time David has got it back up and running within 4 hours. I'm a little worried though; there's definitely something going on in the inner workings somewhere....watch this space.)

Anyway, I'm back up and running (for now), so here's the next blog; a parade of cruise ships that visited Mt Maunganui during our stay at the Mount Holiday Park.

First up on a rather bleak morning is the Norwegian Jewel (well actually 2nd if you count Golden Princess who had her own blog). The flotilla of  fizz boats are not heading out to welcome her to port; being a Saturday morning, they're keen fishermen off to their favourite spots out in the bay.

Living up to her name the Norwegian Jewel's paint job brings a splash of colour to an otherwise grey day.

The cruise ship berths at Mt Maunganui wharf are in an ideal position for visitors; the boardwalk along Pilot Bay starts just outside the gates, Main Beach is 10 minutes away and it's just a short 5 minute walk to the shopping centre.

Maasdam visited the next day, here she is leaving port on Sunday evening.

I must have slept in on Sunday morning as I have no arrival photos, I suspect it was raining.

Unusually for the Bay of Plenty, the whole weekend was grey and bleak. Cheerio Maasdam, come again soon.

Three days later and another Holland America Line ship, the Amsterdam arrives in port.

Next up- and on a more typical sunny BOP day- is Radiance of the Seas. 

Did you spot this lady in the photo above? What do you think it says on the front? I'm not so sure, unless they had binoculars, that anyone would be able to read it. I couldn't and I was just above her.

I caught sight of the front as she rushed off to get to the gate before the ship berthed. It says 'Welcome Radiance'. I thought the Captain might have been her son, but locals tell me she is a regular, welcoming many of the cruise ships into port. 

I took this shot of Radiance from the lower slope of  Mauao (Mt Maunganui) in the afternoon. You can see the entrance to the holiday park and parts of the Ocean and Pilot(top section) Camps in the lower left of the photo. We're in the Harbour Camp which is around the corner to the right.

Later in the evening as the sun went down, Radiance of the Seas departed Tauranga harbour.

Early the next morning (it's a tough life being 'Johnny on the spot'), I was back at my favourite spot overlooking the Entrance, in time to see the sister tugs Tai Timu (ebb tide) & Tai Pari (flood tide) heading out...

...to meet Nordam, the third 'dam' ship to arrive from the Holland America Line within a week.

Big Toot...

Once the tugs had finished escorting Nordam to her berth, and just 30 minutes later, they headed back out...

...to bring Sun Princess through the Entrance. I also moved down to the water's edge.

The calm waters here at the Entrance belie the fact that it can be a treacherous stretch of water. Tauranga Harbour is a large estuary with a tidal range of 1.98m covering an area of over 200km².  Approximately 290,000,000 tonnes of water flow through the Entrance at each tide change which can generate currents of up to 7 knots. If the tide strikes an opposing wind, the waves can be huge. We've had a few hairy rides through the Entrance during our boating days. 

Tangiroa challenges Sun Princess...

...as she sails by.

On this stunning summer's day two cruise ships are welcomed to the Mount.

Later that evening a group of us watched from near the boat ramp as the cruise ships prepared to leave port.

After Sun Princess departed, I headed along the Base Track a short distance to capture Nordam leaving too.

I was a little disappointed to miss the biggest cruise ship of them all, (well the biggest to visit NZ waters), Ovation of the Seas wasn't due in for a week or so but if I was lucky and timed it right I might just catch her in Napier.