Sydney

Well the party is over and the long trek back to Lightning Ridge will soon begin. The ship docked at Circular Quay at 5.00am ready to disembark almost 2,000 passengers, most of whom have been on board for the last 114 days. 

I couldn't quite pull myself out of bed for our arrival through Sydney Heads but as it is a slightly cloudy day that will reach about 28 degrees Celsius I showered early and headed to the upper decks to take in the sights of Sydney. It is a view I rarely tire of. One of the joys of sailing on a vessel the size of the Crown Princess is that you get to see the city from a different perspective. Just before we docked I looked out of my window just as we were passing Kirribilli House. The guys on the other side of the ship would have had the even more spectacular view of the Opera House. Looking down on these iconic buildings is not something you would normally get to do and it really was a real treat to do so. 

I took one of the aft elevators to deck 15 and walked to the back of the ship to treat myself to a bird's eye view of the Harbour Bridge. I then ascended the stairs up to decks 16, 17 and ultimately 18 and caught the sun rising behind the Opera House. The city was coming alive with joggers doing their stuff around the foreshore, the harbour ferries were coming and going from Circular Quay and the roads were filling with traffic ready for the last day of the working week. 

The breakfast buffet was its usual chaotic mess, the espresso coffee stations were getting hammered and everywhere I went I was stepping over the luggage of those people yet to disembark. The staff and guests were saying their last goodbyes. There were hugs, some tears, lots of laughter and lots of good intentions, promising to stay in touch. 

Its a little sad to break up my posse of ship board friends. Hailing from San Francisco, Perth, England and South Africa we were a veritable United Nations. It may have only lasted 36 days but real and hopefully lasting bonds were formed. My liver will be thankful though, it has not taken this kind of beating for some time. 

I'm heading to airport, in an ironic twist, to pick up my car to start the drive home. Today I'm just driving to Toowoon Bay, on the Central Coast, where I'll spend a couple of nights and start to detox. Then on Sunday it will be on to Narrabri with Monday seeing me make the final run into Lightning Ridge. Its been an absolute blast and in a heart beat I could happily turn around and do it all again. Sadly the bank balance and the need to replenish it stands between me and that goal. 

Auckland - New Zealand

New Zealand generally, and Auckland specifically has always been a place that I've either flown over or transited through. I've always wanted to visit here but I always put it off, because compared to the rest of the world New Zealand is next door.  So when the Crown Princess pulled into Princes Wharf in Auckland I had no valid reason not to get off and take a look around. 

The weather was far from good with the threat of rain hanging on the air for the entire day. I hooked up with a couple who came from England via South Africa and we had a wander around the downtown area. After a short consultation we spied a Eurocar dealership atop the steepest hill I have walked up in a very long time. There are steadying my heart rate and being delivered oxygen we hired a GVM Haval H6, a mid size SUV, and proceeded to tour around the environs of Auckland. Once we tired of looking at houses and having completed a small shop to buy a few necessities we fired up the GPS and headed for wine country.  

After about a 30 minute drive we arrived at Westbrook Winery, it was established in 1935 and offered a most interesting food and wine selection. We selected a grazing plate loaded with brie, blue and gouda cheese, accompanied by a plentiful variety of crackers, augmented by dried figs, two chutneys, freshly sliced pear and a mixture if dried fruit and nuts. We also ordered a chorizo and chilli pizza and had 4 by 50ml glasses of their various wines. We were told the Riesling was an annual award winner and we tried an Albarino (a grape variety I had not encountered before). In my opinion the wine was fine but not great. The food however was a revelation. Everything was of an extremely high quality and came with ample portions of everything. Lunch was a veritable feast. Our hosts then gave us a few great tips on where to go to get the sweeping views of the local beaches and how best to check out the nearby gannet colony. 

From the seaside we headed back to the heart of Auckland to visit Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World. Opened in 1985 by the eponymous Kelly Tarlton, a famed marine archaeologist and treasure hunter hailing from New Zealand. He died a few weeks after his attraction opened in 1985 and by 2025 it had clearly seen better days. The penguin enclosure in particular appeared to be run down and in need of some love and attention. The rest of the exhibit seemed in better condition and we witnessed sharks, rays, turtles, and all manner of marine wildlife throughout the facility. However it is was time to head back to the ship to plan for dinner. 

As we had the car until 9.00pm and didn't need to be back on board until 9.30pm we though we should check out a local restaurant for our evening meal. Well we thought lunch had been amazing our dinner was out of this world. Through some basic google searching and a couple of phone calls we settled on a restaurant named Onslow that had a 4.8 start rating. Two us ordered an entree of Tuna Carpaccio with a burnt butter sauce, drizzled in chilli oil. It was noting short of mind blowing. I have never tasted anything like it in my life. The mains were equally spectacular and the sommelier who paired a different wine with each of mains was knowledgeable while also being accessible and friendly, his choices were excellent and I don't think I could fault anything with the evening. 

To top the night off the car hire place was right around the corner. We returned the vehicle, walked down the hill of death, the one we had come up on earlier in the day, took a stroll through the main plaza enjoying the lights of the harbour. We rejoined the ship, headed to our favourite bar and drank the ship out of port as we gently headed for the last leg of our journey back to Sydney. 

Moorea - Tahiti

We set off at 4.00am in the morning for the 17 kilometer journey from Papeete to Moorea. Now you can drive 17 Kms in next to no time, when you are trying to steer a 113,000 tonne ship it takes a little longer. From port to anchor (there was no dock for us to tie up to) the journey took 3 hours. Being there was no dock we had to disembark using the ship's tenders (otherwise known as lifeboats - capacity 150 people) for the 10 minute trip to shore. After putting down anchor in a Cook's Bay (strangely enough not the bay where Cook anchored) there was soon a conga line of tenders taking passengers to and from the ship to the shore. After Papeete, Moorea was revelation. It was quite simply an island paradise. 

Those passengers who had booked activities on the island were ferried ashore first. As I prefer to get up at the crack of midday I made a concerted effort and headed ashore at 10.00am. There was not a direction you could look that didn't feature a spectacular backdrop. Lush tree covered volcanic mountains in one direction, the azure waters of the lagoon in another. With a population of just 20,000 people this is truly God's country. 

Moorea hadn't had a cruise ship call since April so the locals were happy to have the 3,000 of us turn up and inject some money into their economy. The islanders had set up various stalls to buy locally produced artifacts and there were a multitude of touts enticing us to join bus tours, open back 4 wheel drive tours, swims with rays and reef sharks or maybe take a dolphin and whale watching tour. Six of us banded together and hired an open back 4 wheel drive. The seats were comfy, the sites were spectacular and the driver come guide was excellent. 

We set off and visited yet another black sand beach. the views were amazing. We then headed up one of the mountains to take in a view of the two bays that Moorea has to offer. 

It was off to a pineapple plantation followed by some Polynesian ruins. The ruins were littered with that most French of mascots, the Feral Red Jungle Fowl. The ruins were surrounded by Macadamia and Chestnut trees and the chooks went crazy when our guide broke open a macadamia nut so they could feast on its contents. We finished the trip with a stop at a pineapple processing factory, and much more importantly a distillery. Here we sampled a variety of fermented and distilled pineapple products, many of them were spectacular. Now with a suitable buzz we jumped back on to the 4WD and headed back to the tenders for our trip back to the Crown Princess. 

At 5.00pm we upped anchor leaving behind the most amazing oasis for our five day sea journey to Auckland, New Zealand, our last port of call before home. 

I could definitely see myself coming back here to spend some more serious time.

Papeete - Tahiti

We pulled into the dock at a suitably early hour and I opened the curtains of the stateroom to reveal the island paradise of Tahiti (I wish). Sadly we were at the docks, in an uninteresting part of town that is the capital of this very religious nation that was essentially closed due to it being Sunday. We disembarked and wandered around the neighbourhood, which was just a selection of bolted shut security roller doors painted with funky murals.

We tried hiring a car, it was going to be $400 for the day and we would have to return it to the airport. There were some extremely overpriced day tours we could undertake so we tried to jag a maxi taxi for our group of five to go exploring. We were having no luck and had almost given up and were heading back to the ship and then we stumbled across a lovely guy called Robert O'Connor, a native islander with a very Irish name. He took us on a delightful drive around the island. He was tour guide, translator, and driver all rolled into one. There is no way we could have done better. 

First stop was the black sand beach where there both memorials to the infamous Bounty and Captain Cook. Cook was here to witness and track the path of the planet Venus across the sun. This only happens twice every 243 years with the two transits separated by eight years. The last transit was in 2012 and the next will be in 2117. The beach was clearly in full use on the day of our visit with the locals fishing, swimming, sun bathing, playing Bocce, and generally just having a good time. The shore was littered with outriggers and the black sand, while looking like dirt, was actually the remnants of the path of a volcano that had been ground into fine particles over many many years by the sea. 

From there we moved off to the largest waterfall on the island,  The Fautaua Falls. Apparently with a permit you can take a six hour hike to the top and soak in the pristine waters of The Fautaua River. I will have to take their word for it. 

Some gardens were the next port of call and while perfectly charming they were not something to write home about. Lots of native species along with accompanying interpretative signage. The rainfall being so plentiful here the grounds were positively bucolic. From here we went to a very interesting water filled grotto that was billed as a cave and about three feet deep. Water was raining from the roof along with odd small pebble. Robert told us that when he was a kid he would never swim to the back as all the children believed there were monsters there. It  was allegedly about 100 meters deep in to the mountain but the natural light faded at about the 15 - 20 meter mark. I thought it would make a great place for a midnight dip after a long day of sightseeing but I wasn't going to be doing that on my own with the ship leaving port at 3.00am and the the grotto being a 55 kilometer drive away. 

    

That concluded our jaunt around the island which we managed to completely circumnavigate. We headed back passing a very expensive marina and what looked to be the major shopping district to plan our dinner. 

Like the shopping precinct almost every restaurant was shut so we settled on the one within walking distance of the port. Named "Le Retro" I am not entirely sure what the retro elements were. We must have waited 15 minutes for someone to take our drink order. There were clear language barriers as my French is about as good as my Swahili. However when there are four people at the table and two dishes, defined as starters by their own menu  are delivered with the main meals I think there may have been a little passive hostility towards the non locals at their tables. 

Our waiter and the Maître D minced around the restaurant appearing to do nothing while the one waitress ran around and aggressively did everything else. The meals were pretty good but not good enough to make us stay for dessert so we headed back to the ship having contributed $300USD to the local economy and headed to our favourite bar, The Vines, where our favourite bartender "Gil", served us our regular night cap (or two) and headed to our stateroom to sleep the night away. Tomorrow we head to Moorea, which is twenty miles away. All these trips to shore are eating in to my drinking time. Thank goodness we have five sea days to follow!

Pitcairn Island

After two and a half days on the high seas we arrived at Pitcairn Island to undertake some "Scenic Cruising". There was never any intention to land here as the facilities for visiting make Easter Island look impossibly easy. With a population of 47 people, 35 of whom who were allegedly on the island when we sailed around it, there was not a lot going on. Pitcairn Island is famous, or maybe infamous, for being the place where the Bounty Mutineers ended up after the mutiny on the bounty, where Fletcher Christian rebelled against the harsh leadership of William Bligh and led nine sailors, six Tahitian men along with twelve Tahitian women eventually settling on Pitcairn Island. 

Apparently the choice of Pitcairn Island was quite deliberate. It was known to have existed at the time but appeared on the charts of the day in the incorrect location. The mutineers deliberately searched for it, having left behind some of their shipmates on Tahiti and putting Bligh and eighteen of his crew in an open boat with little food and a sextant and a watch by which to navigate with. Upon arriving at Pitcairn they burnt the Bounty so no passing ships could identify it and so the mutineers had no choice but to make their new home work. 

Despite their best intentions fights over alcohol and women led to most of the mutineers, including their leader, being murdered within in a couple of years of arriving. One mutineer survived for eleven years and the last mutineer lived for 40 years turning the entire community to God using the ship's bible. From this the children were educated and Pitcairn reached a population of 196 which it couldn't sustain. The entire population was then relocated to the former penal colony of Norfolk Island. Two groups of 17 then 27 people eventually returned to Pitcairn and so now both island's populations are seeded by the descendants of the mutiny on the bounty.   

The Crown Princess headed for Bounty Bay, no points for guessing where it gets it's name from. It then did a 360 degree pirouette and head off around the island. Pitcairn looks a lot like Norfolk Island and like Norfolk it is made up eruptions from three undersea volcanoes. There is no natural harbour, no source of fresh water, no real native food, no airport, no dock (of any great size) and it is about as an inhospitable a place as you could hope to find. The local place names pretty well sum up how hard life is on the island. Places have such plain yet evocative names as "Oh Dear", "Dan Fell", "Where Dan Fell", "Lin Fall", "Nellie Fall' "McCoy Drop" and my favourite the "Hill of Difficulty". 

There is one resupply ship per month and that is the only way adventure tourists can visit. There is nowhere for the ship to dock so all goods and passengers are bought ashore using longboats. There are four of these. They each require a crew of three to operate and there are only twelve adults capable of crewing them living on the island when they are put into service.  In the case of a medical emergency you are transported off the island by longboat to another island that has an airport called Mangareva. It's an open boat ride of 540 Kms. From there it is a further 1540 Kms air ambulance ride to Papeete, the capital of Tahiti. 

All in all it was interesting place to visit but I have no desire to move there. Next port of call is the aforementioned Papeete. No doubt populated by friendly natives and annoying Frenchmen. Bring it on.

 

Easter Island

The not insignificant effort that went into securing a Chilean visa so I could disembark at Easter Island all came to nought. The weather was the foulest it could be. When we reached the island's coast the seas were throwing up a four to six metre swell and we were besieged by constant squalls so it was just not safe to launch the tenders to go ashore. 

This place is in the middle of Bum Fuck Nowhere. People complain about how long it takes to get to Lightning Ridge. Well the Ridge is a doddle compared to Easter Island. The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island which is 2075 Kms away and it only has about 50 people living on it. The closest town with a population greater than 500 is Rikitea which is 2606 kms away, and the nearest continental land mass is Chile which is 3512 Kms away. If you drive from Perth to Sydney that is about 3,931 kms by comparison. 

We arrived at about 9.45am and headed for what passes for the harbour. As there are no docks that could handle a ship of this size the only way to make it to shore would be by tender. As the weather prevented that option the best that could be done was getting the ship to turn on its own axis using the side thrusters. That gave everyone a chance to see that part of the shoreline from all points of the ship. It was an impressive party trick to watch, as the thrusters slowly turned us around and the current took us gently to the south west. Once we had done our pirouette we headed out to the three mile mark and proceeded to circumnavigate the island. 

Fortunately I had some binoculars with me and the statues that Easter Island is famous for, known as Moai, were pretty easy to spot from the ship. There are almost 1,000 of them scattered across the island,  in various states of disrepair. The ones still standing are nearly all facing inwards, ostensibly to protect the villages and the people. The few facing out are set at the higher points of the island and are to protect Easter Island itself. 

Four hours after we arrived it was all over. The ship headed west and we were on our way towards Pitcairn Island, a two and a half day sail away. Upon arrival we will have no choice but to do the same style of circumnavigation again if we wish to see anything of Pitcairn. 

Now however I have more important things on my mind. I'm off to the bar. 

Pisco, Peru

Again we docked at some ungodly hour and I was in the land of nod when the ship tied up. I arose however about 7.30am as I had booked a tour of some Incan ruins. I showered and got ready for the day's big adventure and soon breakfast and a most welcome flat white coffee arrived to my stateroom. I caught up on the previous day's emails and then headed to the bus that would take me on the 90 minute trip to the ruins. 

The landscape was desolate. You could enact a fake mars landing on the ground around me and no one would be any the wiser. I assumed that view would improve. It did so marginally but there was not much I could wax lyrical about. 

After about 30 minutes of marscape the scenery started to change to include the agricultural sector. Even though there was next to no water they were successfully growing asparagus, blueberries, mandarins, grapes, corn and other crops that I have now forgotten. The towns we passed through, of which Pisco was the most notable, were dreary to the point of appearing slum like. Most of the homes were unfinished. It turns out there is a reason for this, if you finish your home it is assessable for tax, but while it remains incomplete it doesn't incur any.  

We started to weave our ways into the hills where there was little of consequence to see. Our guide droned on speaking quickly with his thick Peruvian accent. He knew his stuff and he was proud of his country but I am not really that  interested in Peru's gross tonnage of blueberry exports in any given year so it was a little difficult to remain attentive. We finally arrived at the ruins and they were nothing short of spectacular. 

This was a significant outpost of the Incan world. It was a little freaky to see a finished excavation that was littered with tourist where there was clearly much more left to find. In the short walk I took above the ruins I picked up fragments of broken pottery, pieces of fabric and small lengths of rope. None of it had any evidence of colour or quality so both the grave robbers who predated the archaeologists and the archaeologists themselves had deemed these finds unworthy and not proceeded any further. 

We saw old bathhouses, schools for girls who would become the polyamorous wives of the rulers, putting the Mormons to shame but certainly giving them something to aspire to. There were barracks, slave quarters and communication houses where if a message needed to be passed along the chain of command there would be a squad of runners ready to relay the message to out post as far away as the more famous Machu Pichu. 

We were told that these communication houses were to be found every 10 kilometres and that they could get a message to the aforementioned Machu Pichu in 15 hours, which compares more than favourably with the alleged 17 hour drive it now incurs. These hubs also had sleeping quarters along with food drink. 

After two hours of expertly guided tutelage it was time to complete the ho hum return journey through the depressing towns and the desolate landscape. 

The only interesting thing of note was the bus crashing through a boom gate as we entered the port. The boom gate was a bent and twisted mess, the bus however didn't even seem to be scratched. I did a little shopping on the dock to ensure every suitcase is packed to the brim with souvenirs then headed for the pizza joint for a late lunch, followed by the bar. All in all an enjoyable and instructive day. We have fours days are on the high seas before we reach Easter Island. Still no news if we can get off or not. Fingers crossed.