New Zealand and Australia

Greetings to all,

I cannot believe that I have fallen over a month behind in my postings... big mistake on my part as I have been to some fantastic ports since my last entry. I skipped writing about Tonga and Western Samoa as these are two ports I did not particularly get to see a lot of, but both of these places made me appreciate technology that much more as they are definitely far behind. More postings to come, I promise!

February 12, 2009
Auckland, New Zealand

After making a couple of visits to random islands in the Pacific, (Apia, W. Samoa on February 6, then Nuku'Alofa, Tonga on February 9... I didn't do much in either of these places), and losing a day (February 8) when the ship crossed the international date line, Queen Victoria pulled into Auckland, New Zealand just before 7:00am on February 12.

I once again chose to do a tour, but this one was a bit different than going off to see city sights or visit ancient ruins. This time, I signed up to sail on an authentic former America's Cup Yacht.
NZL 41, nearly 80 feet long, was a semi-finalist in the 1995 America's Cup and was like no yacht I'd ever seen. It was the first time I had ever been able to get up close and personal with a true racing yacht and it was beautiful on the outside and in. Apparently, the entire boat weighs 24 tons, but 20 of the tons rest inside a lead bulb at the bottom of the ship's centerboard.

There were four crewmembers on board and about twenty of the ship's guests (plus myself) along to help sail the yacht, so as soon as we got out of the marina and into open water, the motor went off, the sails went up, and everything got more quiet and peaceful. The crew asked for some of the guests to help out in turning the cranks which hoisted sails, tightened/loosened the sheets, and before I knew it, the ship was heeling close to forty five degrees and doing about 12 knots as we traveled away from the marina. We were able to travel past a couple of the racing yachts in town for the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series and sailed past one of Larry Ellison's personal yachts as well (he owns the American BMW Oracle racing team).

I spent most of my time relaxing and taking in the scenery around me, but also got a chance to try operating the cranks and even got to take the helm for a few minutes as we headed back towards the marina. It was fun using the Auckland Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere, as a point to sail towards, and the view of the city skyline was breathtaking. The Sky Tower was the first tall structure of its kind that I had ever laid eyes on and I hope one day to go up one of them, possibly in Shanghai.

After we returned to the marina and debarked NZL 41, I went off for lunch at a cheap Mexican joint before commencing my afternoon. I started off with a short trip to the Auckland Maritime Museum to kill some time. I made my way through the small museum's three or four exhibit halls with a bit of haste since what was inside did not entirely interest me. There were boats large and small, some fancier than others. They had the boat that won Gold in the Munich Olympic Games, some old whaling boats, and other record setters, but for the most part, I was not entirely interested in what was inside. This could have partially been due to the fact that I was short on time and did not have enough of an opportunity to take everything in, or it could have been because I was about to go bungy jumping off the Auckland Harbor Bridge within the next hour or two.

At 2:30pm, a shuttle picked me up along with several of my friends and took us to the AJ Hackett Auckland Bungy headquarters, located at one of the ends of the Auckland Harbor Bridge. After a short wait and safety talk, we were harnessed up and began our bridge walk to the pod that for some stupid reason, we were all going to jump out of with a long elastic cord attached to our ankles. I was the penultimate person in my group to go, but enjoyed every minute of jumping off of the bridge from 40 meters up that I had to do it again. It was an amazing experience and quite an adrenaline rush, but after doing two bungy jumps and one skydive, I still prefer the latter (though I am unsure if I will every skydive again).

After the bungy jump, I proceeded back to the ship to change into some dry clothes (I opted to do a water touch in my first jump which turned into getting soaked up to my knees) before going out with some friends for a beer and then some AMAZING Thai food, and then headed back to Queen Victoria before she sailed at 8:00pm. Though I did not get to see much of Auckland or its surroundings up close, I had an amazing day and looked forward to seeing more of New Zealand.


February 14, 2009
Christchurch, New Zealand

Two days after stopping in Auckland, Queen Victoria docked in Lyttelton, New Zealand so guests could visit Christchurch, and I decided to go into the city myself. I had about 5 hours of free time and went in and walked around the city.

Christchurch was a totally different world in comparison to Auckland. It was much smaller, and once I got about six blocks from the shuttle drop-off point, I felt like I was in a totally different world. The nice shopping spot went away, and so did the happy atmosphere. Consequently, I opted to stay closer to the city center and walked for hours while doing some shopping (for some reason, it became t-shirt day for me... I bought 4) and ate some amazing souvlaki for lunch. In addition to a McDonald's, Burger King, and even a KFC, the city was littered with Chinese restaurants, Japanese/Sushi restaurants, Korean restaurants, and Souvlaki joints. The souvlaki was a good choice, and was a nice reminder that I will be returning to Greece before I know it.

After lunch, I made my way to St. Luke's in the City, the main church in the city square in Christchurch which was beautiful on the inside and out and then from there went to Victoria Park, which was still decorated for the Chinese Lantern Festival. Lanterns were shaped like people, animals, and beautiful objects and I enjoyed walking through them. I did not have a lot of time here, but was glad I had a chance to walk through the park. I headed back to the shuttle following the visit to the park and headed back to the ship before she set sail for Tasmania.

February 17, 2009
Hobart (Tasmania), Australia

FINALLY, after 25 years, 6 months, and 3 days, I made it to Australia. Tasmania is a separate island and all, but still, it counts! The people there sound Aussie, they say gidday occasionally, and the vibe is pretty Australian as well, so again, IT COUNTS! I chose to do a tour that took me to a variety of locations and it was my first full-day tour since December.

The first stop on the tour was the city of Richmond, where I was able to get a glimpse of Tassy culture outside of a touristy area. Richmond is an older city, and one of the oldest in the region, and it is there that I was able to see the first Catholic Church in all of Australia. It was quiet and grassy and I liked being in a more peaceful area than the busy cities of Auckland or Christchurch or the public areas on Queen Victoria. We only were able to get off the bus for around 10-15 minutes, but it was still enough time to relax.

From Richmond, we made our way to a nice vineyard not too far away for a brief wine tasting and a chance to walk around the garden there. The wine tasted good, and I wanted to buy a bottle but had to rush back to the tour bus before it left.

We made our way from the vineyard to the Salmon Ponds Trout Hatchery where we ended up spending more time than we spent anywhere else, mostly because it was a nice spot to have our picnic luncheon. There were some trout and even some salmon in some ponds, along with picnic benches and beautiful grassy areas to sit in or walk around, but they also had a museum set up like an old fisherman's house and a nice creek to walk along. The lunch was different than anything I'd had before: apparently it is traditional in Tasmania to have a piece of asparagus wrapped in a piece of rolled-up bread with some cream cheese inside... it tastes great.

After one more brief walk around the trout hatchery following my lunch, (or as the tour description called it, a "picnic-style luncheon", I boarded the tour bus for the journey to a national park.

About 30-45 minutes after departing the trout hatchery, I arrived at Mt. Field National Park, the sight of Russell Falls. The ten-minute walk to the falls was well worth it as I had the chance to walk through a beautiful forest and the falls themselves were amazing. In the immediate foreground was a short waterfall, and behind it was another set of falls that towered over its entire surroundings. It was like nothing I had ever seen, though I have not seen too many waterfalls in my lifetime. Sadly, my time at this stop was limited so I took about a minute to take in the surroundings before returning back to the bus and heading to the last stop on the tour: Something Wild.

Something Wild is a wildlife sanctuary for orphaned/injured animals that otherwise could not survive in their natural habitats, and my visit here was amazing. As I walked in, I passed some parrots on one side of me in a cage, and an emu or two were running around in a pen on my other side. Then, I passed a sleeping wombat and looked to my right and saw, in a small enclosed area, three baby Tasmanian devils. Everywhere I looked, there was an animal native to the Australia/Tasmania area that was being cared for. Next, on my left were three kangaroos in the distance all laying down, and another one was running around the rather large pen that had been set up for them. I kept walking and realized I had walked right into a large area where wallabies were roaming free. One ran past me and came within three or four feet, and I got some great close-up photos of it, but then I went on to get a closer look at the kangaroos and another wombat (this one was awake) before heading back up towards the main entrance of the zoo for its main attraction: the family of koalas.

I arrived at the koala cages and found what seemed to be three little animals sleeping (they tend to sleep about twenty hours a day, so this was more or less expected), but then one of the animal guides brought a 10-month old koala out for us all to pet and photograph. I jumped in and had my picture taken with Scuz, as the guide had aptly named him, and pet him a little bit before returning to the bus and heading back to the ship.
All in all, my day in Tasmania was exciting on all counts. I got to see waterfalls, a touch of older Tassy culture, trout, and some interesting animals. The scenery was not too bad either, so I am glad the ship visited Hobart.

February 19-20, 2009
Sydney, Australia
FINALLY, I MADE IT. At around 5:45am, I woke up on February 19 to go outside and watch as Queen Victoria sailed into the Sydney Harbor as the sun rose. I made it out with plenty of time to take in our sail-in towards the Opera House and Harbor Bridge, and it was remarkably awesome to see something I had waited my entire life to lay my eyes on. I had hoped that Queen Victoria would be docking relatively close to the Opera House, so I was ecstatic when I realized we would be docking right at Circular Quay, situated right between the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. Anytime I looked out of a port-side window while on board, the Opera House was in plain view.

I decided to spend my first morning in Sydney on a tour so that I could get inside the Opera House and see the main venues while learning a bit about the history of one of the world’s most famous buildings and how it came to be designed and built. The tour also took me around the city and to Bondi Beach for some free time to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery and atmosphere. The highlight of the morning was still seeing inside the Opera House and walking around from the other side of the beautiful exterior that is known of by the majority of the world’s population.

Driving through Sydney was also an amazing experience as I got to see a city I had always wanted to see. It was alive with personality but not nearly as congested as Manhattan.
After I returned from the tour, I spent a couple hours relaxing on the steps at the Opera House before I went for a brief walk around The Rocks, the first part of Sydney, and grabbed some dinner while there: a kangaroo burger. The meat tastes a lot like beef but is much lower in fat. I had to return to the ship after dinner and decided to stay in for the night as I had to get up early the next morning.

My second day in Sydney was devoted to obtaining a Chinese visa. I found out a few weeks prior to my arrival in Australia that in order to be granted entry into mainland China (for my purposes, Shanghai), I was going to need to get a special visa from the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, and that it was going to cost me $205 Australian (around $130-135 USD). In the end, I gave myself the option of either doing the Sydney Harbor Bridge Climb or getting the visa since they were about the same price, and I opted to see Shanghai instead.

My friend Greg picked me up from the pier at around 8:15am and we drove to Camperdown (a lower-class suburb of Sydney) to go to the Consulate so I could drop off my visa application. After dropping it off, I had a few hours to kill, so Greg took me over to Darling Harbor so I could see that and then across the Harbor Bridge for a quick sandwich and a walk through Luna Park, the amusement park set up by the city after the bridge was constructed. We then headed back to the Chinese Consulate to pick up the visa before I came back to the ship to give Greg a quick tour.

After showing Greg around, I stopped off at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) for a quick browse before meeting up with two of my friends from Manhattan, Hal and Lidia, who were visiting Sydney on holiday for two weeks. I went for a cup of coffee with them and caught up on old times (I hadn’t seen either of them since last summer, so it was great to see them again) before saying goodbye to Sydney and returning back to the ship.

My first exposure to mainland Australia was a phenomenal experience. While I was only able to see a small portion of Sydney (and a much smaller portion of the entire country), I know that this is a place I will have to explore more of in the future. I cannot wait to return.

February 23, 2009
Yorkey’s Knob, Australia

Three days after departing Sydney, Queen Victoria dropped anchor just off the coast of Yorkey’s Knob, a gateway to the city of Cairns. While the majority of ship’s company and guests went into Cairns for the day, I, along with 270 guests and four other crewmembers, elected to go on a tour to the Great Barrier Reef.
A high-speed catamaran picked all of us up directly from the ship and took us out to a purpose-built pontoon located directly above the reef. They had snorkeling equipment to use, offered scuba dives, an underwater viewing chamber, and a semi-submersible boat that you could go for short rides in to view the reef if you were against getting wet. I opted to do a thirty-minute scuba dive with my friend Ollie, and it was amazing. The last time I went scuba diving was when I did my final open-water certification dive in 2003 at Coki Beach, St. Thomas, but everything came back real quickly and I had a blast seeing the reef up close. I swam past a shark and later on, a sting ray, and few fish seemed to be easily amused by following me around. It was a spectacular experience and worth every penny. I spent an hour or so in the afternoon snorkeling and found this experience almost equally as exciting as the morning dive I did. Somewhere in between I found the time to enjoy the buffet luncheon that was prepared on the pontoon for the guests, and relaxed for a bit as well. It was a great day and I felt so fortunate to see the reef for the first time.

Pearl Harbor and More

Forgive the absence of any posts of late. The last three weeks have been filled mostly with days spent cruising the high seas with no land in sight. Since my last entry, the ship has made seven calls to ports in North and Central America, and also spent a day (January 18) transiting the Panama Canal, so I did not feel the need to write any entries about spending time on the beach or walking around, which I did in Curacao and in Puerto Vallarta. On January 13, I met up with my mother and grandmother in Fort Lauderdale, went shopping, and ate Chinese food. On January 21, the ship docked in Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala and I was able to get off for a little over an hour and spent time walking around the shops in the port and sitting on the grass. in Cabo San Lucas on January 25, I ended up getting off just long enough to eat the best fajitas I'd ever tasted, and on January 27, I met up with some friends and went flying on the trapeze at the Santa Monica Pier.

That pretty much summarizes the last three weeks aboard Queen Victoria, but yesterday, the ship docked in Honolulu, and that warrants a full entry.

February 1, 2009
Honolulu, Hawaii

For perhaps the first time since joining Queen Victoria last September, I was awake for a morning sail-in. I went up to the guest gym (located above the bridge) way before the sun came up and was able to watch the sun rise over Honolulu and the island of Oahu from the treadmill. It was one of the most beautiful sail-ins I am sure I could ever witness, (though I am sure Sydney will rival it), and it was a great start to what would be a great day.

I took a shower, ate breakfast, and headed off to go on a tour that would take me first to Pearl Harbor and then on a brief city tour of Honolulu. I always knew that Pearl Harbor was something that I was going to have to see in my life, and yet, I did not prepare myself mentally for the visit.

We arrived at the visitor's center for the USS Arizona memorial shortly after 9:00am, and though I anticipated a waiting time for over an hour, it was about thirty minutes before I had to be in a theatre to watch a short film that covered not only the attacks on December 7, 1941, but also events starting from as early as the a decade prior. As I left the theatre to board the motor launch that would take me out to the USS Arizona Memorial, everything more or less hit me at once. I realized where I was, and I realized what I was about to go and see, and I realized what had happened where I was standing nearly seventy years ago.

The boat ride out to the memorial was short, and I was silent for most of it. The memorial itself is unique in that it is situated in the middle of the harbor immediately above the sunken Arizona, where over 900 sailors are still entombed. Parts of the battleship peak above the surface and much of the hull is visible despite being under water.

I was dead silent at the memorial; I walked around, took some pictures, and did my very best to take everything in. Visiting this memorial took more of a toll on my emotions than anything else I had seen to date, and I doubt I could visit the memorial again. I paid my respects and reboarded a motor launch to take me back to the visitors' center before my tour group left to see some Honolulu city sights.

From Pearl harbor, we headed to a beautiful lookout point called the Loni Lookout; it is situated 1,200 feet above sea level and the exposures were ridiculous from there. From there, we made our way through to the "Punchbowl National Cemetary" which is one of five American national cemetaryies that are not located inside the Continental United States, and it was also beautiful. From there, we headed downtown and passed the Iolani palace: the only royal palace to be located on American soil, and then headed back to the ship.

I had some time to walk around the pier area and do some shopping after getting back to the ship, but I had a great morning in the lovely state of Hawaii, and look forward to going back at some point to explore the rest of it.