Due to the earthquakes in Christchurch a few years ago, cruise ships are anchoring in nearby Akaroa until the port of Christchurch is able to handle cruise ships again. The captain warned us that due to high winds, we might not be able to tender into Akaroa, but in the morning I guess things looked good enough for passengers to go ashore. Valerie booked us a tour yesterday via the Internet and after disembarking we had about an hour to burn before the tour started. We wandered around the main beachfront promenade and then to the library which was surrounded by cruise passengers, a sign of free WiFi. We checked our email before heading to the meeting place for the tour.

The tour bus drove us into the nearby hills surrounding Akaroa. The bus driver mentioned that the land and harbor around Akaroa were formed by an ancient volcano. He speculated that the rocky soil allowed it to withstand the earthquake much better than the sandy soil of Christchurch. Along the way, we stopped at a cheese factory, but didn’t buy any cheese.

After the tour, the winds picked up considerably. Valerie was worried that the weather would get worse, so we headed back to the ship early. She was right. When we returned, the captain had decided to stop passengers from disembarking. Other passengers returning later in the day reported that their tenders were pummeled by waves and flooded during the return trip. According to some reports, one of the tenders experienced some engine problem during a return voyage, stranding several passengers for hours.

Due to an unspecified medical emergency of a crew member, we arrived at Port Chalmers one day ahead of schedule as the captain raced the ship to port as quickly as possible. Since there were no shore excursions planned, the shuttle from Port Chalmers to Dunedin was free. (I think it usually costs money.)

Our plan for Friday was to rent a car and drive around the Otago Peninsula. Since we arrived early, we contacted the rental car company to pick up the car on Thursday instead. After arriving in Dunedin, we walked to Cadbury World where we bought various chocolate covered bars, but declined to take the tour. Around 3pm, we took a bus to pick up our rental car. On our drive into the Otago Peninsula, we took winding Highcliff Road through the hills. Our first stop was Penguin Place where we could view yellow-eyed penguins. Our tour guide (who was surprisingly buff for his age) led us through a series of covered trenches from which we could view the penguins without disturbing them. Apparently, if the penguins can only see your head, they don’t realize how big you actually are and don’t consider you a threat. We also visited the nearby albatross nesting grounds where we saw lots of gulls, some marine mammals, and a few albatrosses flying in the distance. On the way back to Port Chalmers, we drove along the less scary shore-side road.

On Saturday, we woke up early to drive north. Our first stop was a beach where we could view the Moeraki Boulders, which are surprisingly round boulders that formed around fossils. (One such fossil can be seen in the Otago Museum.) Next, we drove down to a lighthouse surrounded by a small cliffside wildlife preserve. We walked along the preserve path for a kilometer or two. We didn’t see any more penguins, but we did see some seals and gulls fighting for space on rocks. Our last tourist stop in the north was Shag Point, which has a tidal shelf that we couldn’t get to because it was high tide. Shag Point was also the first place we’ve been hailed upon during this journey. We drove back to Dunedin and stopped at the Olveston house, a 1910’s era historic home, for an hour long walking tour. Around 3pm, we returned the car, took the bus back to the Octogon and walked to the Otago Settlers Museum. The OSM is an excellent, free museum chronicling the history of the settlement of the area built in an old New Zealand Rail station.

On our last day in Dunedin, we took the Taieri Gorge train through the Taieri Gorge. The train stopped along the way for tourists to take photos. At the end of the line, some local women set up temporary shops to sell trinkets and snacks. The scenery was nice, but not particularly different from what we had seen during our last two days of driving. If we had not been trudging around the countryside the past few days, I think we would have been much more impressed by the train ride. After the train, we walked to the mostly free Otago Museum (different than the OSM and home of the fossil mentioned earlier). Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to walk through the museum due to ship departure, but what we did see was some interesting coverage of the natural history of the Otago area.

The ship’s revised itinerary left us with 3 relaxing days at sea in a row. We used the opportunity to do some of our favorite shipboard activities: trivia, mixology class, and specialty dining. Trivia is always a great place to meet people. On this cruise, one of our trivia partners, Joan, has over 1200 cruise day credits (the most of any passenger on the ship). She reads the dictionary for fun and knows more trivia that anyone I’ve met. Mixology class is always fun and a great place to meet younger folks. (On Holland America, younger refers to anyone under 60 years old.) Usually, mixology also offers the best value for booze on board, but the new daily $3 cocktail sampler is a close competitor.

For dinner on Tuesday, we ate at Canaletto, the onboard Italian restaurant. It was unexpectedly delicious and we left stuffed. I was a bit worried about eating there because the first time we tried it (several cruises ago), Valerie was extremely unhappy with the calamari. I guess Holland America must have learned from the experience because calamari is no longer on the menu.

We visited Melbourne earlier in the trip, so we slept in rather than heading out to town in the morning. Our late departure from the ship allowed us to hear the captain’s sad announcement. Due to bad weather conditions, the ship is going to skip Hobart and the Milford Sound. Instead of going around the southern end of the south island of New Zealand, the ship is going to traverse the Cook Strait and head to Port Chalmers a day early and stay overnight. Valerie is very disappointed to miss the Milford Sound. She says we’ll have to visit New Zealand again.

We eventually got up and left the ship in search of internet access. At the general store just outside the port, we purchased 2 hours of WiFi and cancelled our rental car in Hobart and booked a rental car for the extra day in Dunedin. Afterward, we took a very short walk along the beach before heading back to the ship.

In the morning, we checked out of the hotel, dropped off our bags, and found a place to eat lunch. We found a nice sushi restaurant near the Thai place we ate previously. After lunch, we returned to the hotel, got our bags, hailed a taxi, and headed to the White Bay Cruise Terminal. It would have been convenient if the ship had been leaving from Circular Quay, but the taxi ride wasn’t too long and only cost $35 from Kings Cross. Ship check-in was a bit delayed due to a computer problem, but the process was much smoother than Costa.

As the ship makes its slow journey to Melbourne, we took the opportunity to relax and overeat. I’m definitely going to gain weight on the cruise. The food is just so much better than Costa.

In the morning, we drove north toward Sydney along the Grand Pacific Drive. Along the way, we stopped at the Sea Cliff Bridge and several other scenic viewpoints. At our last viewpoint, we saw some adventurous individuals preparing to paraglide off the cliff. Sadly, we had to leave before they launched because we had to return car to Avis around noon. We dropped off the car in Kings Cross near our hotel.

In the evening, my second cousin Caity and her partner Ian graciously treated us to a fabulous dinner at Ms. G’s, an Asian-inspired “New Australian” fusion restaurant in Potts Point. The food was delicious; it was the best restaurant meal we’ve eaten in Australia. The last time I saw Caity was when she was 8 years old, so there was a lot for us to catch up on. It was great to see her again and to meet Ian.

We started the day with an awesome breakfast at our B&B, The Pommy Tree in Canberra. After eating, we visited Parliament House. Parliament was in session, but we didn’t have time to see it in action. However, we did accidentally stumble upon a viewing area for a committee hearing on Ebola. We stayed for a couple minutes before becoming bored enough to leave. Our next tourist stop in region was the NASA Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, which is most famous for relaying Neil Armstrong’s first words from the moon. The giant satellite dish is impressive, but the visitor center is not and the complex is probably not worth the long drive for casual tourists.

On our drive to Wollongong, we made several stops along the way. Our first stop was the Minnamurra rainforest, but unfortunately it closed at 4:30pm and we arrived at 4:50pm. Our next stop was the Kiama blowhole, a rock formation at the ocean’s edge that shoots up water like a blowhole. Unfortunately, the blowhole was not very blowy today, so we continued to Bombo beach and then Minnamurra beach for some quick sightseeing. Finally, we arrived at our B&B for the night in Bulli.

Our first tourist stop was the incredible National War Memorial in Canberra. The upper level of the memorial has a Vietnam Wall-like list of names of people who died in conflicts in which Australia participated, an eternal flame, and a shrine. The lower levels contain an extremely impressive museum that documents the history of those conflicts. There are interactive displays, old warplanes, helicopters, informative videos and posters, and a very large collection of wartime artifacts from several wars. It’s probably the best museum we’ve visited this trip.

Our second stop is the National Zoo & Aquarium. The zoo houses a large collection including lions, tigers (Bengal & Siberian), a giraffe, a shy koala, emu, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, wombats, monkeys, bears, and otter among other animals. While it doesn’t have as many Australian animals as Featherdale, the overall size of the collection is much larger and the grounds are more impressive. Valerie signed us up for the Zooventure add-on during which we got to feed meat to a tiger and a lion, throw food to otters, feed a carrot to a giraffe, hold snake, and have a bear lick nutritious paste off our palms. Overall, the National Zoo is probably one of the better zoos I’ve ever visited. (The aquarium was not particularly impressive.)

For dinner, we returned to Dickson for an Australian take on Indian food. While expensive (as everything in Australia is), it was quite delicious.

In the morning, Fiona dropped us off at a nearby Avis so we could pick up our rental car. Driving on the left side of the road was surprisingly easier than I expected, but there were still a few hiccups. Luckily, Valerie would flinch whenever I got too close to the edge of the road or another vehicle. I’m really glad we got a GPS. Not only does it tell you where to go, it also tells you where speed cameras are located and NSW is full of them.

Our first touristic stop of the day was Featherdale Wildline Park. It contains an impressive collection of Australian animals, including koalas, wombats, kangaroos, tasmanian devils, and flying foxes. Most of the koalas were unapproachable (I hear they can be quite vicious), but the staff let us take a picture with one of the tamer ones. We also bought some kangaroo food for $1 and fed some wallabies.

After the park, we drove to Canberra and checked into our B&B. We stopped in downtown Dickson (a suburb of Canberra) for some dinner. Dickson has an impressive collection of pan-Asian restaurants. Unfortunately, most of them were closed because it was a Monday, so we settled for an inexpensive Korean restaurant with okay TripAdvisor ratings.

Glenn and Fiona drove us up to the Blue Mountains. From a distance, the mountains have a slightly bluish tint. Glenn says that the bluish hue is caused by a chemical released into the air by the many eucalyptus trees that grow upon the mountains. We stopped at several scenic viewpoints along the way. Australia is a truly beautiful country (and I’ve only seen a tiny part of it).

One particularly memorable stop were the Leura Cascades, a series of small waterfalls followed by much larger waterfall. We hiked the trail down along the stream, taking pictures along the way. Valerie was initially frightened that she would be bitten by mosquitos along the way, but later revised her fear to include some kind of Australian biting fly.

We were all hungry from the hiking, so we stopped at a favorite local eatery for lunch (or dinner or whatever Australians call the mid-day meal). Unfortunately, they were full, so we found a nearby French restaurant that was notable for its particularly non-descript dish names such as “piece de boeuf.”

Our drive continued into Katoomba where we saw the Three Sisters, a formation of three adjacent pillar-like rocks. Glenn, Valerie, and I hiked a bit to a better viewpoint of the Sisters and the top of something called the “Giant Staircase.” Perhaps earlier in the trip Valerie and I would have attempted to descend the staircase, but by this point in the trip neither of us was in good enough shape to do so. Thus, Valerie descended a couple flights of stairs for a picture and then we returned to the parking area. From the top, we could see Scenic World, which offers a touristic mine car ride down into the old mine shaft as well as a gondola to somewhere in the adjacent valley. We decided against taking the death-defying descent into the mine shaft.