Wellington, New Zealand Friday 13th March Today is the last of our New Zealand ports and we are in the capital, Wellington. We opted to walk into the city rather than take the shuttle bus. We walked all the way to Civic Square and had a lovely coffee on Queen's Wharf. As we have visited Wellington before we decided to spend the day walking around the harbour area. We returned to Queen's Wharf to have lunch on the upper verandah of a restaurant overlooking the h...

Akaroa, New Zealand Thursday 12th March We are anchored today in Akaroa Harbour in the Canterbury region of the South Island. The village of Akaroa is the oldest colonial town on the South Island and is a former French colony with many of the road names in French. We had a pleasant trip in the tender to the pier in Akaroa and then had a wander around this small but very lovely village. The population of the village is just 700 but with two cruise ships in the h...

Dunedin, New Zealand Wednesday 11th March We have returned to New Zealand to the Otago region of the South Island. Today we are visiting Dunedin which is a place that was settled by the Scots in 1848. They named it Dunedin which is the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh. We berthed at Port Chalmers and took the shuttle bus into Dunedin. We stopped at the Octagon in the middle of town where there is a statue of Robert Burns in front of St. Paul's cathedral. We went d...

Friday 27th February Tauranga Our third New Zealand port in as many days. Today we are going on a whole day tour that will take us to the geothermal area of New Zealand. We are travelling over to Rotorua which is over an hour away. It was a lovely drive passing endless kiwi plantation and large forests. As we got nearer to Rotorua we started to see steam rising up from bushes and sometimes from people's gardens. We drove along Lake Rotorua to our first stop whi...

Thursday 26th February Auckland Overnight we have sailed to Auckland. With two of our table companions we took the ferry over to Devonport. We visited here two years ago and really loved the area. There are beautiful houses here, mostly wooden, built at the end of the 19th century. It is a lovely area to walk in and we took a circular walk along the water's edge and then inland around Mount Victoria. Along the way we saw the huge tree in the photo. I'm not sure...