Running Out of Words to Describe Stunning Landscapes

Day 40, South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand Cruise

Friday, Nov. 11, 2022; Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand.

Today’s destination is acclaimed to be New Zealand’s most famous tourist destination, a world’s top travel destination and the eighth Wonder of the World (the latter according to Rudyard Kipling). And I had never heard of it. It is Milford Sound, which really is a fjord in the southwest corner of New Zealand’s South Island.

For once I actually sketched on site (from the ship) and painted the sketches on the same day.

This is my third visit to New Zealand, but previously I’ve only been on the northern part of the North Island – Auckland, Tauranga and the Bay of Islands. After leaving Sydney on Tuesday, we spent two days crossing the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Now we are circling to the south. For the next eight days we will cruise up the eastern side of the country’s two main islands. Then we will circle back west to Sydney, where I will disembark.

Eight port days in a row will be exhausting. I’ve booked four ship excursions in an effort to use up the onboard credit Holland America gave me as a mea culpa for canceling the 16 weeks of cruising in Europe I had booked for last summer.

In Sydney we picked up several hundred new passengers, many of whom are Australian. We can recognize them by their accents, of course, and by the fact that hardly any of them wear masks. I don’t think they realize that we had an outbreak of Covid before they came aboard. And I read that New Zealand will require anyone who tests positive to isolate for a minimum of seven days, not counting the first day. That would mean missing all the New Zealand ports. I’ll continue to wear my mask in the elevators, in the shows and anytime there is a big crowd.

Because this is technically a new cruise, our Cruise Critic group had another meet and greet the first day out of Sydney. Everyone introduced themselves and some shared some great tips about exploring the New Zealand ports on our own.

I don’t normally blog on sea days, but I thought I would share a few things about the ship. One of the many things I like about cruising is the laundry, which I get for free due to my repeat status. Holland America has made a concerted effort to reduce its use of plastics, so instead of receiving laundry in dry-cleaner plastic bags, it comes back in reusable garment bags, with underwear still folded and wrapped in tissue. There is usually a nice note from the laundry department. My challenge has been to find and remove the laundry tags. Occasionally at home I would run across one I missed originally.

They have changed our daily program from the old When and Where tri-fold format to a double fold called The Daily. I’m struggling to get used to it. In the previous version, all the activities were listed in chronological order. Now some special events are not part of the chronological list, but instead featured in different parts of the program according to theme. It’s easy to overlook key activities. Plus we lost an hour each of the last two nights, so I am rising later and later.

The Navigator app on our phones still has the entire list, so that’s my go-to for what’s happening next. I miss a lot of scheduled activities, as I spend sea days working on the blog and catching up on sketching and painting. Here are a few recent sketchbook entries from Sydney’s Chinese Garden of Friendship.

I’m experimenting with different styles, so they can be hit or miss, I think. But I enjoy the practice.