On April 28, 1789 Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Captain William Bligh on the Royal Naval vessel, HMS Bounty. After the mutineers seized the ship they put Bligh and 18 loyalists on the ship’s launch and sent him on his way. Most of the mutineers went to Tahiti, the rest went to Pitcairn, led […]
Read More »We are nearing an end to the segment of the cruise where we sail through French Polynesia. The last stop is Easter Island or Rapa Nui, which is actually claimed by Chile, some 2,200 miles away. It is located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern point of the Polynesian Triangle. It is famous […]
Read More »We have left New Zealand and we have arrived in the South Pacific where we will spend the next week or so sailing through Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. These island countries include Fiji, Tonga, Tahiti and Niue. These grouping are oddly categorized. For example, Micronesia refers to small islands and Polynesia refers to many islands. […]
Read More »Auckland (Tamaki in Maori) is by far the largest city in New Zealand. The University of Auckland, founded in 1883, is the largest University in New Zealand. The city’s total population is about 1.5 million making it home to 1/3 of the population of the entire country (population 4.5 million). It also has the largest […]
Read More »Originally, we were supposed to make a port call at Gisborne, but the weather intervened. The waters were too rough for us to take tenders in from the big ship, so we steamed straight through to Tauranga and had an extra day there. Tauranga, settled by the Maori late in the 13th century, is the […]
Read More »Napier (Ahurin in Maori) is located on the eastern coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It has a population of about 68,000 people. Most notably it is set in the famous wine producing region of Hawke’s Bay. Needless to say, that’s where we went and visited the Abbey Cellars Winery, which is a […]
Read More »Wellington (Whanganui-a-Tara in Maori) is the capital city of New Zealand and its most populous urban area. It is in at the southwestern tip of the North Island, which lies in the latitudes known as the “Roaring 40s”. There it is exposed to the winds blowing through Cook Strait, so is the windiest city in […]
Read More »When Peter Jackson filmed JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, he was determined to be as true to the book as possible. One of the first problems he faced was finding a location that looked like the Tolkien’s description of the fantastical Middle Earth which he dubbed “Endor”. Endor had snow-capped mountains, golden grass […]
Read More »We docked for a day in Dunedin. It is a small town settled by people of Scottish descent, so not surprisingly, the town’s architecture is similar to that of small towns in Scotland. After doing on the port we proceeded to head out to board an old-fashioned steam train for a ride through the countryside. […]
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