Wellington

We spent three nights in Wellington; this gave us two whole days to see the city with no traveling. We spent the first day wandering around getting our bearings and shopping for cold weather and outdoor gear that we hadn’t brought with us. We both got long johns and I got some water sandals. Whoop ti do.

Our hotel was just a block away from Cuba Street. Cuba street is a narrow street, mostly closed off from vehicle traffic, that has a lot of older brick and stone buildings with restaurants and little shops.

We ate twice at Tulsi, which serves nouvelle cuisine, East Indian style. We ate there the first time because it was one of the few things open, and the second time because the first time was good.

The second day, Sunday, we spent mostly at Te Papa, the national museum of NZ. We were there from about 10:30 am until 2:00 pm looking at the natural history and Maori culture exhibits, went out to finish our shopping, and came back for another hour or so to see the post-European-contact art collection.

We are finding that traveling is a great opportunity for us to learn about ourselves. Cities, for us, are merely “nice” and not “great.” It’s beginning to look like we can’t get to great unless we are out in bush/outback/country/mountains without crowds of people around us. We didn’t take a single picture in Wellington until we were leaving and waiting for the ferry.

And we are very glad we did Te Papa, but, frankly, we have already seen the Maori meeting house at the Waitangi treaty center, and a slew of Maori artifacts already, so going to Te Papa didn’t blow us away the way it might have if we hadn’t already seen and done what we have seen and done.

Te Papa made me think about the differences I saw between the Australian Aboriginals and the Maori. In some ways there are great similarities with Native Americans; all three cultures suffered dramatically from European settlement and subsequent expansion (wars, disease, and discrimination), and lost most of their valuable land. All three cultures are striving to regain lost pride and wealth.

But the Aboriginal people came to Australia perhaps 50,000 years ago, and lived there without much change (as far as anyone could tell) for most of that time. They were hunter-gatherers who had to roam from place to place to find enough food, and they existed in small groups that made decision mostly by consensus, and that warred relatively infrequently among themselves. This was probably because they had to work too hard to feed themselves in a very hostile environment that was full of animals that would happily kill them. They didn’t have domestic animals, agriculture (most of the land was not suited for it), buildings or other permanent structures, no trees big enough for canoes or other boats, and no common language. Yet they lived successfully in a hostile environment for a vast amount of time; archeologists estimate from excavated skeletons that the average longevity of an Aboriginal before European contact was about 40 years.

The Maori, on the other hand, only came to NZ within the last 1000 years; they brought with them a complex Neolithic culture called “competitive tribalism,” domestic animals and domesticated plants. They lived in a bountiful land with huge trees, cultivatable soil, and fish and other animals that could be eaten.

The Maori developed a kind of art and music that is easy for us to understand. They also spent a lot of time fighting with each other for territory and status. Defeated Maori warriors and their families were made slaves by the victorious Maori, if they were not killed. Although the Maori lived in a much more hospitable place than the Aborigines, archeologists estimate from excavated skeletons that the average longevity of a Maori before European contact was about 30 years.

We caught the ferry from Wellington to Picton Monday morning. We waited in a queue of cars for about an hour to get on the ferry, and watched locals successfully fishing.
The ferry is huge, and carries passengers, cars and large trucks. The crossing takes about three hours and the travel guides all mention sea-sickness as a possibility. We had a calm crossing.

Picton is quite pretty, but we are getting a bit jaded. We drove on to Nelson, the major town nearest Abel Tasman National Park and Golden Bay, found a nice unit, had a good dinner at the Stingray Café, I blogged and practiced dobro, and Miriam read travel books and plotted our next move.

Rotorua to Wellington

We got up, packed and checked out. We weren’t sure which route to Wellington would be best. One goes inland for a while, then goes down near the Western shore. The other is longer, may not be as big a road, and goes to the East coast at Napier and then back inland. Paul, our host in Rotorua, strongly recommended the route through Napier so we chose it.

We drove to Taupo for breakfast. Taupo is on Lake Taupo, and we could see beautiful, snow-capped mountains across the huge lake. The wind off the lake was very cold.

South of Taupo we took a cutoff that was simply marked “Scenic overlook.” It went a surprising way off the road and dead-ended above a lovely waterfall out in the middle of nowhere.

We drove on to Napier. Napier shows up as a nifty place in the guidebooks because it is on a bay facing the Pacific Ocean, and because it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930s and rebuilt all at once in Art Deco style. We walked along the bayfront, which has a nicely tended park.

Napier is a tourist town, and every Art Deco façade covers some sort of tourist peddling activity. I did talk to a very nice man in a craft co-op who turns beautiful wooden bowls and sells them at reasonable prices. Since I have done a bit of turning we talked technique and tools; I think he appreciated talking to someone who understood a bit of his craft. Also lunch was good. But that was about it for us and Napier. 1930’s Art Deco city buildings hold our attention for maybe 20 minutes on a good day. But some folks really crave its ice cream.
We left Napier and drove to Auckland, stopping for a flat white in Carterton, a small town that somehow has a nifty, atmospheric wine bar with a hammered copper espresso machine. Since it was the only place in town that was open at that time (we walked by three cafes, all closed, before we found this one), we were particularly grateful the coffee was delicious.

And then on to Wellington. To get to Wellington from Upper Hutt we had to drive about 20 K of very sharply curved, windy road that is cut into the mountains between Wellington and the East coast. The cut was almost vertical, the shoulder was no more than a foot wide, and the other side of the road was a sheer drop off. The road switched back and forth, sometimes almost doubling over on itself. It was really fun to drive, and would have been particularly excellent on a motorcycle.

We found our way to our hotel without trouble. Again Miriam picked a good one. No view, but the weather is crummy so that doesn’t matter. It has a big living area, a separate bedroom, is quite clean, airy and reasonably priced, and is located just a block from good restaurants and shopping.

We ate at an Indian restaurant that got high ratings in the Lonely Planet; the food was delicious. We watched a bit of TV and crashed.

In Rotorua

Rotorua is noted for its volcanic activity. The city has a large lake and lots of tourists; it has oodles of fee-to-see-it Maori cultural experiences, and one can also zorb, bungy jump, mountain bike and do other vigorous things.

With these possibilities to inspire us, we got up and walked into town to eat. We found an organic restaurant called “NBs.” It was their first morning open and we got super attention and delicious food. I had French toast, which bore little resemblance to what I had experienced under that label before. It included fried, caramelized banana, and was yummy.

We walked back to our motel and drove up into the hills to partake of one of the nearby volcanic and Maori cultural experiences. Our map showed a large area that was marked both “Whakarewarewa” and “Te Puia.” We turned into Whakarewarewa since it came first. Whakarewarewa turned out to be a small Maori village located among the hot springs. The area was used by Maori before European contact, and has been continuously occupied since at least 1904, when a tiny Catholic church was built there.

The Maori in this place now live in small European style houses, but we saw an example of the kinds of houses that the Maori used to use in this area. They were very small, low roofed, and built from the trunks of tree ferns. Our guide said that the tree fern trunks have insulating properties, and that several people survived in them for ten days when they were buried in ash and mud after an eruption late last century.

Most of the village cooking is done by putting food into steam vents, or by lowering it into the hot water pools. It's supposed to be tasty, but doesn't always sit well with everyone.

There are a number of pools with different temperatures that the residents use for different purposes. The community also has built rectangular cement bath tubs; water is diverted into them from one of the hot natural pools and allowed to cool to tolerable levels in time for evening baths.

We saw a delightful show with traditional dances and singing. The leader was a short, attractive Maori woman of indeterminate age who spoke quite articulately with what seemed, to my ear, to be an English storekeeper’s accent. The others in the troupe were interesting, but she was a delight; full of energy and personality, with a good voice and good dancing and poi skills.
Most of the audience was children from a nearby city. At the end of the normal performance they all got on stage and sang and danced a Maori song. It was really fun to watch. Kids singing are fun anyway, but it was especially neat, in view of the demonstration we saw later and the tension between Maori and Pakeha that is evident in the news, to see this large, diverse group of Maori and Pakeha kids, happily singing and dancing a Maori song, with the professional performers tapping their feet and singing along quietly.

According to our guide all the people in the community act like family, and refer to each other as aunties, uncles and cousins. They apparently make their livings on tourism. Besides participating in the show, people in the community carve, make clothing and souvenirs, do tattoos, or operate shops for tourists.

We also saw the old cemetery next to the Catholic church. Because hot water or hot mud lie just a few feet underground bodies were buried in cement sepulchers above ground.
Off at one end there is a geyser that erupts frequently. Our guide pointed out people sitting on benches on the opposite side of the geyser. She said they were at Te Puia, the rival tourist stop that costs twice as much, and that owns the land on the other side of the geyser.

We passed Te Puia on our way out. It has a gigantic parking lot, fancy modern buildings and elaborate pathways, but no village. We felt pleased that we had accidentally picked the one we did.

We drove further South to another volcanic tourist attraction. On the way in we stopped at a free mud pit and watched it belch grey mud. When we got to the not-free tourist attraction we decided that one grey, belching mud pit is probably pretty much like another and drove back to Rotorua for late lunch.
We had trouble finding a spot because the restaurants close at 2 or 2:30 pm and don’t reopen until dinner. We did eventually find one, but not until we wandered quite a few blocks. Our wandering took us by a Maori political demonstration. Apparently the NZ police targeted some Maori for an anti-terrorist raid and many people (certainly including the demonstrators) are concerned that the raids were racially motivated.

After lunch we drove back to our motel, tried the motel’s spa (nice and warm), and talked about where to go next. I went out for groceries (NZ cheese and crackers, avocado, “tiger sticks” (small, flavorful loaves of bread) and a pineapple). Miriam did laundry and found us a place to stay in Wellington. We watched the Maori TV channel and an Auzzie outback serial called McLeod’s Daughters and crashed.

Raglan to Rotorua – The Waitomo Caves

We awoke to good weather. We took a short walk along the edge of the bay, pronounced Raglan insufficiently spectacular to consume a whole day when the weather was good, and decided to drive on to see the Waitomo caves.

The drive to the Waitomo caves took about two hours, all through lovely pastoral scenery, and all on windy, two lane roads.

We couldn’t make up our minds from the guidebooks which cave tours to do, so we went into the “i site.” Most NZ towns have a government sponsored information center with brochures, books and helpful people who know a lot about the area, but are not allowed to make recommendations.
We selected the 45 minute glowworm cave tour (the basic, everybody-does-it, tour) and a two hour walk through Ruakuri cave.

The standard 45 minute tour was fine. We saw limestone stalactites and stalagmites, and rode in a boat with a dozen other folk in the darkness under the glowworms. The guide pulls the boat slowly through the cave using ropes. The glowworms do look like stars in the night sky.

The Ruakuri walk was much better. First, there were only five of us on the tour, so we could take our time and ask questions; second, the guide reminded us a bit of our younger son who worked for a while as a whitewater rafting guide, and third, we could take pictures (which is not allowed on the basic tour).

The company that runs the Ruakuri walk apparently spent about $4.5 million on the walkways and paths. The tour begins by walking down on metal walkways that switch back and forth, descending us by about 60 feet into the earth. We walked through cracks in the limestone, along a subterranean river, saw “tomo” (deep holes in the limestone that sometimes run from the surface to the bottom-most caves), and actually got to see a glowworm up close as it began eating a fly.

As the guide said, glowworms look a lot better with the lights out. With the lights out they are small points of coldfire blue light. With the lights on they look like horizontal strands of brown snot, with delicate strands of clear mucous hanging down.
Glowworms live in caves above underground streams and rivers. Flies and other insects that feed on things in the water are attracted by the blue lights in the dark, and are ensnared in the mucous strands. When that happens the glowworm hauls up the mucous strands, bites the head off the ensnared insect, injects something to dissolve the hapless victim’s innards, and sucks the resulting muck out.

Glowworms are the larval form of a fly, and live in worm form for about nine months. When they turn into flies they live for only four days, and, since they are born in caves, are often caught and eaten by other glowworms. It doesn’t seem to be an enviable life.

NZ had large flightless birds called “moa;” they were extinct at the time of European contact. The largest stood about nine feet tall. The guide said that many moa skeletons were found in the caves at the bottoms of the tomos. The moa apparently would be walking along, not watching where they put their feet, and step into a tomo and fall down to their deaths.

We left Waitomo and drove to Rotorua, an area noted for its volcanic activity and for opportunities to see presentations on Maori culture. The drive took a couple of hours. We stopped at a town called Te Awamutu at about 4:00 pm. Most of the restaurants were closed (too late for lunch, too early for dinner) but we found a small place that served roasted meats. We had chicken and kumara, and thus fortified, drove the rest of the way to Rotorua. We found a nice motel with a spa pool; our unit had a kitchen, living area, bathroom and separate bedroom. After our nights in backpackers and on the sailboat, the space seems extravagantly excessive, but nice. The operator even presented us with a free bottle of NZ chardonnay, as well as a pint bottle of milk. Presentation of a bottle of milk seems to be customary at some NZ motels.

Omapere to Raglan – the Kauri Museum and the Gum Fields

We left Omapere and drove down the West coast. We didn’t stop to revist the Kauri forest because our night views had been really special and we didn’t want to spoil them.

We had breakfast at a small town called Pirongia. Next door was a butchery that illustrated one of the things I enjoy about travelling in Australia and New Zealand. Folks and signs say things you understand, but in a slightly different way than they would at home.
We did stop at the Kauri museum about an hour South of Omapere. It is quite large, and has exhibits of old furniture made of Kauri wood, huge slabs of Kauri wood, an extensive collection of Kauri gum, lots of Kauri logging equipment, and dioramas of life during the time Kauri was logged and the gum fields were in operation.

The sap of the Kauri tree is clear and golden brown. Once it is out of the tree it hardens into a lightweight, solid material that resembles amber. The Mauri used Kauri gum to make torches and lights, to make a form of chewing gum, and they used the ash as the dye in their distinctive tattoos. Europeans used it for varnish, for linoleum, and for carving.

The gum was very durable, and it could be recovered by digging into the remains of ancient Kauri forests that had long disappeared.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s there was a good market in Europe for Kauri gum, and many New Zealanders worked in the gum fields, digging up buried Kauri gum.

The exhibits in the Kauri museum made it clear that this was a very, very difficult way to make a living. The diggers (almost all Pakeha (non-Mauri) from the pictures and exhibits) would poke long iron rods into the wet ground and identify potential lumps of gum by the feel against the rod. They would then dig down in the rocky, wet soil as much as thirty feet in some places, and pull out the gum. The gum was in lumps ranging from a few inches in diameter to hunks about 3 or 4 feet long and a foot to two feet wide. The diggers would then wash the dirt off the gum, take it back to their shacks, spend the evening using knives to remove gravel and dirt from the gum, put their clothes to dry over the fire, collapse, wake up, and do it all over again. About once a week a buyer would ride by and buy the bagged, graded gum. There were several pictures of old men who spent their lives working in the gum fields, and who lived and died in small corrugated iron shacks after they were too old to dig. There also was a picture of a 93 year old man digging gum. He worked all his life in the gum fields, and was still working at 93.

After the museum we drove to Raglan, a pretty little town on a bay in the Tasman Sea. We found a backpackers recommended by the Lonely Planet and got a room. The rooms all surrounded a central courtyard with grass. The other people at the backpackers were all at least 25 years (and maybe more) younger than us, and mostly surfers. We do, however, bump into the young German lady who is studying to be a travel agent. We feel like old friends.
The rooms at this backpackers are quite small. There was not much room on either side of the double bed, and there was about four feet between the foot of the bed and the French doors that ran the width of the room and opened into the courtyard. With our mountain of luggage we barely fit. But the room was clean and neat, and had a window over the head of the bed that looked out onto the bay and allowed a sea breeze in.

This backpackers has its bathrooms were in one corner of the courtyard, and has separate bathrooms for separate sexes – a more complex arrangement than at Cap’n Bob’s. It also has surfboards, kayaks and a small sailing pram available for guests. It sits right on the edge of the picturesque bay, and has limestone formations across the bay that apparently make an interesting kayaking destination.

It was grey and cold when we arrived, so we were not tempted to do anything wet that evening. We had a good dinner at the only place that was open, and planned to stay the next night to check Raglan out.

Paihia to Omapere - the Kauri Forest at Night

We drove from Paihia, Bay of Islands, on the Pacific Ocean (the East side of the North Island), to Omapere on the Tasman Sea (the West side of the North Island), stopping at Kerikeri to visit the candy shop that the Lonely Planet highly recommends. I got macadamia nut caramel corn and Miriam picked chocolate covered caramels with walnuts.

For those readers who visit NZ in the future, I recommend the Kerikeri candy shop, but I also recommend that you not consume an entire bag of macadamia nut caramel corn on the trip from Kerikeri to Omapere, as we did.

We got to Omapere midafternoon and checked into a very nice room Miriam booked for us that overlooked the bay. It had its own veranda, a separate bedroom and bathroom, and was pretty new. A big change from Cap’n Bob’s, it almost felt too opulent.

Miriam had booked us on a night tour of the nearby Kauri forest, which is the largest remaining Kauri forest in NZ. Kauri trees are very large hardwood trees with massive girth. They were used extensively for furniture and ship building because the wood was easy to work, resisted the weather, and was available in incredibly massive timbers. It was so good that it was almost completely logged off. The Kauri forests that once covered a large portion of the North Island are no more, and it is now against NZ law to cut down a living Kauri tree.

Our tour guides picked us up in a passenger van at about 6:00 pm. Again we were lucky, and only one other couple had booked the walk that evening: Matt and Angela. They were from Australia and on their honeymoon.

Our guides were two Mauri men. Joe, the older one who developed the night tour, was taller than me and slender with a hawk’s nose and a long black ponytail. He used to work for the NZ “DOC” (the Department of Conservation). His duties, among other things, included finding and killing brush tailed possums. The possums are not a native species, have no significant predators, and are decimating NZ indigenous animals, including the kiwi.

Dane, the younger guide, was much taller than me with a round face and a round body. He seemed quite shy, and had a very nice singing voice.

This tour was fun, in part because it was many miles away from what you might call “slick.” Joe was a bit hard to understand, and Dane, who spoke very rapidly, even harder. Joe clearly had worked up a set spiel for the trip, and was at pains to stay on track and not to omit anything. Dane would occasionally lose his place or forget something and look embarrassed. They carried pictures of the local birds (including kiwi), played us a tape of different bird calls on our drive to the forest, and talked a bit about the area and their lives.

We went on two different trails. We went on the first before the sun had set, and passed by an area that the Maori had cleared of trees to help them hunt kiwi. The Maori used kiwi feathers for cloaks; the cloaks were a sign of status. We could clearly see the three different heights of forest plants; the underbrush, the middle, or shorter trees, and the tall trees. But from that place could not see any kauri trees.

We walked deeper into the forest and it got darker. We each carried headlamps, and I had an umbrella in case the mist turned to rain. The guides had more powerful lamps with reddish filters. At one point they had us drop our heads and look only at our feet while we walked about 50 yards. They then instructed us to turn to our left and look up. We beheld a truly massive Kauri tree, and oohed and aahed about it.

They the guides told us to turn around; behind us was a giant Kauri tree that dwarfed then one that had just so impressed us. The giant tree is reckoned to be the oldest living Kauri. Its age is guestimated in our books to be over 2000 years. Because of the semitropical climate without distinct seasons, Kauri and other trees in this part of NZ do not reliably develop growth rings the way trees to in the Pacific NW, so determining the age of these trees is more of an art than it is at home. Our guides told us the giant was almost 5000 years old.

We walked back to the van and drove to another trail. This time it was dark when we walked into the forest, and we had to use lights to see where we place our feet. This time the guides led us to within about 50 yards of the largest living Kauri. The forest was quite dense, and it was dark, so we had no idea we were approaching this tree, called Tane Mahuta. The guides then began a chant in Mauri, announcing our visit to the king of the forest. We walked to the tree, listening to the chant. Although the sky was dark and cloudy there was plenty of moonlight, and when we got to Tane Mahuta it was magnificent. It almost seemed to glow, and it was huge. Our guides then talked and chanted in Maori, and then Dane played a native flute and swung a bullroarer rhythmically while Joe chanted and told us about the tree.

We were given hot chocolate and then walked back. Joe pointed out a very large nocturnal spider that weaves a blanket-like web, and a kind of forest cricket with 3 inch antennae.

We understood that we were supposed to be looking for wildlife (maybe even kiwis, which are nocturnal) on our way back, so we thought we should be walking quietly and keeping our lights off or dimmed.

Evidently we misunderstood because Joe and Angela took the lead, merrily swinging their lights, crunching the gravel, and talking in loud voices about the increase in housing prices in Perth, where Angela is from.

Miriam and I dropped back and tried to imagine we were alone in the forest.

At the end Joe gave us each a piece of Kauri gum and reminded us of the preciousness of life. It was a really good tour and I highly recommend it. However, I do note that the Mauri were a very warlike people who did their share of damage to themselves, other people and their environment, not unlike the English who later settled/invaded NZ, so the “be peaceful and one with nature” message seemed a bit incongruous to us.

Our hotel arranged for hot dinner to be waiting for us. I had a “bacon shank” (kind of like a ham hock) and kumara, the local sweet potato that was a staple of the Maori and is still grown and eaten in NZ. Yummy.

On the Manawanui in the Bay of Islands

We got up early Thursday morning, loaded our pile of gear into the car and drove down to the wharf at Paihia. I deposited Miriam and the gear at the wharf, drove the car back to Cap’n Bob’s, parked on the grass just in front (with Mervin’s blessing), and walked back to the wharf to find Miriam talking with a fellow connected to our sailing tour.

We had booked a three day, two night “ecocruz” on the Manawanui, a 72 foot, steel hulled, cutter rigged ketch. The Manawanui will hold ten, but there were just two more signed up for this trip: “Sam” and “Lynn.” Sam and Lynn are a Belgian couple who have been working in New Zealand. Sam’s education is in entomology and related areas, and he has been working for a company that breeds bugs to eat other bugs. Lynn is a social worker, and she has been working with disabled folks. They converse among themselves in Dutch, but speak quite good English.

Our hosts are Joachen (“John”), Lilly and Moby. John was born in Germany, spent a bunch of time working in the U.K., moved to NZ and used an advance on his inheritance to purchase the Manawanui. He bought it about eight years ago at an excellent price from folks who had spent their money fixing its basics, ran out of money, and had to sell. He spent about a year and a half fixing it up, and has been running tours ever since. He is 6’4” tall, bearded, and pushing 40.

Lilly is from England, probably in her 20’s and quite a bit shorter; she has to stand on a box to steer. She has a smaller boat she sailed here from England; in the off season she sails North to Tonga and dives.

Moby is a seagoing mutt. Short haired, mostly brown and tan, and fun. He spends a lot of time resting his elbown on a bench and his head on the railing, looking out at the ocean. He gets excited at the words “fish” or “dolphins.”

They are both delightful, as is the Manawanui. Because of our mound of luggage and the dobro we are given a cabin on the port side with a double bunk running across the room and a single running at right angles to it on the left. There is plenty of room to store our luggage under the double bunk. I keep mentioning the luggage because normally we would have left most of it in the car, but the guide books all say that anything left in the car is likely to be stolen. The cabin has a porthole; this satisfies both our need for romance and our need for fresh air.
The Bay of Islands is closer to the equator than most of New Zealand, and is often described as “hot” or “semitropical.” I’m sure it is, but not right now, in the Spring, during our visit. We have to bundle up with most of our warmer clothes to stand on deck. But we love to stand on deck, so a bit of chill is worth it.
We sail out in search of dolphins. There are two kinds commonly found here, and a lot of the service providers here advertise the opportunity to “swim with dolphins.” Our hosts are of an ecological orientation, and don’t offer dolphin swimming except in the unlikely case where the dolphins want to swim with us. John has a great cartoon posted in the cabin. It shows two dolphins swimming along chatting. One says to the other “If I could do just one more thing in life it would be to swim with a middle-aged human couple from Connecticut.”
We do find a pod of oceanic dolphins, but the wind and seas are a bit high (6 foot seas). The trip out apparently reminds Miriam and Lynn of how some birds feed their young by ingesting, partially digesting, and then regurgitating their food. They decide to try this with the local fish, but there was no lasting evidence it worked. Lynn even had aiming problems, and hit a lot more of the boat than the ocean.
They both were done by the time we sighted the dolphin pod, and the experience was a lot of fun. The dolphins are amazingly fast swimmers; they easily catch up to, and keep up with, the boat. We see them surfing swells and riding along with the bow. We all wish we could swim like that.

We have a very late lunch (about 3:00 pm), which is tasty. We then sail to a sheltered cove because higher winds are predicted. We ride the dinghy in for a short hike up one of the steep islands for a beautiful view of the islands in the glowering, grey twilight.
We go out fishing with Lilly in the dinghy until the sun sets, while John cooks dinner. We get nibbles, but the only catch is mine. It’s snapper with pretty blue spots. Everyone in the boat agrees that it is larger than the piece of squid I was using as bait. Lilly unhooks and releases it so it can return to kindergarten.
Amazingly, we are hungry again by the time dinner is ready, and dinner is awesome. Deliciously barbecued steaks (mine is about 12 inches long and 7 inches wide), new potatoes, scrumptious cabbage salad, garlic bread and fruit. The cruise is BYOB and, having been warned, we pull out a bottle of NZ Chardonnay and share it round.
We fall asleep easily, the boat rocking in the swells, cool air flowing in through the porthole, and under a quilt that really actually almost gets us completely warm.
The next day we wake up, have a good breakfast, and sail out to a spot where we can kayak about the shore and into sea caves. We don wetsuits, which are delightfully warm. We have not used the “sit on top” style of kayaks before, but find them easily maneuverable and fun. There is an algae bloom in the water this time of year, so underwater visibility is not great, but it is great to be paddling about the rocky, craggy shoreline.
After kayaking we have lunch. Lunch is an amazing, thick, delicious quiche. We are sure this cruise was not billed as a gourmet experience, but it could have been. And the quantities are huge!

After lunch we sail to our evening mooring, and dinghy over to the island for a short but almost vertical hike to the top of the island where we get great views in all directions and see a Maori cemetery.

We climb back down, dinghy over to the boat and sit down while dinner is prepared. It being a sea cruise I have followed the British naval tradition and brought along a bottle of rum. We share with Sam, Lynn and Lilly (John doesn’t drink, at least on duty) and get to know each other better.

Dinner is amazing. Huge pieces of chicken cooked with ham and cheese inside and spices on the out, assorted accompaniments, and home-made apple strudel for dessert. Sam and Lynn share a bottle of Chardonnay. We consume it all with gusto, but Miriam begins to fret that she must have a tapeworm because she can not otherwise understand how she can eat so much.

We fall asleep, again to the rocking of the waves, again warm enough – but not toasty warm.

Our final day begins with a leisurely breakfast, a trip in the dinghy to the beach so Moby can have a pee, and a short trip to beds of green-lipped mussels. We don wetsuits and are given brief instructions on snorkeling, and are given permission to swear loudly in the language of our choice when we enter the water (or, more precisely, when the water enters our wetsuits). The water is COLD! But it is fun.

It is near low tide, so the mussel beds are only about 8 feet down. The water is murky, but it is exciting to be so near the rocks and moved back and forth by the waves that break on them. At first none of us see mussels, and then we see them everywhere. I discover the wetsuit actually is working, and my breathing rate slows to only about 150% of normal. The larger mussles are about 9-10 inches long. It takes some strength to pull them off the rocks, and we scrape a bunch of skin off our hands, but feel inordinately proud of ourselves.
We harvest a little over a dozen, flipper back to the dinghy, haul ourselves in, and return to the Manawanui. We get out and I discover that it’s a lot warmer on the deck in the wetsuit than it was in the water in the wetsuit. I hang out with Miriam (who wisely decided to pass on mussel gathering and remains wrapped in dry clothing) while Sam and Lynn use the shower, then I take my turn. There is something truly glorious about a warm shower.

We then motor over to “hole in the rock” and then have a late lunch. We help Lilly cut the mussels open. About half their meat clings to one shell and about half to the other. John puts them on the barby, shell down, and dollops them with garlic and butter. We stand around and eat them as they come off, using our first shell as a scoop to assist in eating subsequent ones.
If it weren’t for the sea air and the need to maintain body temperature I’m sure we would have been full just eating the mussels. However, John also puts on large lamb rib chops, and Lilly makes a yummy potato salad, and stir fried veggies with cashews. I am ashamed to admit we ate it all.
Then John heads us back to Paihia. It’s about a two and a half our trip. Here's a picture of the cabin on the way back with Lilly steering, with John on the right and Sam and Lynn on the left.

We arrive about 6:00 pm, unload, say goodbye, I walk over and get the car, pick up Miriam and the mountain of luggage, and we check back in to Cap’n Bob’s. Miriam and I both proclaim we have eaten so much that we will simply skip dinner. We open a bottle of wine, have a cracker, look at each other, and head off to town in search of dinner. We each at a pleasant place off the beach, have seafood chowder and garlic pizza bread, and walk back to Cap’n Bob’s. I transfer our pictures from the cameras to the computer while Miriam starts the laundry, we look at the pictures, and I fall asleep. Miriam, bless her heart, finishes the laundry before she crashes.