And Possibly Dinosaurs
The best parts of being a homebody
Aah, Bay of Islands. Our final port for our honeymoon cruise in Australia and New Zealand!
We were pretty excited about this one; it was the only one we booked through the cruise ship, and the excursion was to ride around in the bay on a pirate ship. Yes please!
If Sean and I are moving to Auckland, we’re buying a vacation home in Tauranga. Or, more specifically, Mount Maunganui.
Tauranga was the one port we didn’t have a solid “plan” for; we didn’t book any tours, we just researched what was available in town and decided to wing it. And it ended up being our favorite stop on our whole cruise.
It’s interesting, the same thing happened on our Mediterranean cruise! The one port where we didn’t make a formal plan, Dubrovnik, was our favorite spot on the whole trip.
Throughout our trip to New Zealand (and, admittedly, quite a bit beforehand), Sean and I joked about how we were going to move to New Zealand.
As soon as we got off the ship in Auckland, we felt at home. It was a city that we could so easily see ourselves living in, that our joke of “moving to New Zealand” stopped being a joke.
Now we just have to figure out how to convince the New Zealand government to let us live there.
The day after we traveled to Dunedin, we arrived in Akaroa, which is about an hour away from Christchurch on the eastern side of the southern island.
Normally cruises go to Christchurch instead of Akaroa, but the 2011 earthquake caused a several-year detour. Beginning next season, cruises will return to Christchurch instead of Akaroa. And I must say, I’m bummed for anyone who misses Akaroa, because this was our favorite port.
Akaroa is home to the largest penguin colony in New Zealand, so you bet we scheduled a tour with Pohatu Penguins.
The first time we actually stepped foot in New Zealand during our honeymoon was on the day after Christmas. We docked in Port Chalmers, which is a small town outside of Dunedin, the second-largest city on the southern island of New Zealand.
We had two main things on the agenda: a half-day bike tour of the Otago Peninsula and a tour of Speight’s Brewery.
It’s time for the second part of my honeymoon recap: Fiordland, New Zealand!
We woke up on Christmas morning to a foggy, rainy view of Milford Sound, which is on New Zealand’s southwest coast. It’s part of Fiordland, which is New Zealand’s largest national park. It’s an absolutely beautiful area with mountains, lakes, and glacier-carved valleys, which are now flooded with ocean water.
For the past 3 weeks, Sean and I have been adventuring around the South Pacific for our honeymoon! We’ve always wanted to move to New Zealand (in a haha-but-no-really kind of way), and we knew our honeymoon would be the perfect opportunity to visit it (yes, we wanted to move there before we even visited, and no, it isn’t weird).
We ended up booking a holiday cruise and got to see a lot of New Zealand, plus Sydney, Australia! Since there were so many amazing places and experiences, I decided to chop it up into smaller blog posts, like I did with the Mediterranean Cruise we went on in 2014.
First up: Sydney, Australia!
