Karen and Bob New Zealand 2011

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Karen and Bob New Zealand 2011

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Sarkissian New Zealand

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Taupo Lake & Waitomo Caves

Huka Falls
Went jet boating along the river today. Not much time to update our BLOG. Just a note to let you know we're traveling along in our van and enjoying New Zealand. A few photos of our cave visit.

All is Well in New Zealand

All is Well in New Zealand
Christchurch is not the same city we visited only 6 days ago. After a tour to a cheese factory, a bee/honey shop, a winery, and several New Zealand National Parks fronting the Pacific Ocean, we came home to the news of Christchurch’s massive, destructive earthquake. Christchurch is about 1-1/2 hours from Karen &Bob’s house by plane, or 10 hours by car plus a ferry transit to the North Island.
We’re now on our way to a resort, Taupo, all safe and sound in our 10-passenger van. Taupo is about 4 hours away from Auckland in the interior valley About noon time we arrived at the underground ”glow worm” limestone caves. A walk through staligtites and staligmites brought us to the river cave entrance where we boarded a boat to take us through the dark, silent, glow worm cave where all we could hear were the drops of water seeping from above ground on its way to the underground river.
BMK Travelers

Final BLOG from the Sun Princess - Farewell

FINAL BLOG FROM THE SUN PRINCESS
This will be our final blog from the Sun Princess. We’re preparing our disembarkation bag tags, packing up our suitcases, and enjoying our final day at sea playing cards and taking line dance instruction. The next dance we’re going to teach at the Yacht Club is, “Cotton-Eyed-Joe”. It’s a great group Western dance.
It’s Jerry’s Birthday and our room steward made him a turtle out of washrags. This cruise both Rosie & Jerry celebrated their birthdays.
We all dressed for Princess Cruises Captain’s Circle Cocktail Party and enjoyed our Lobster/Shrimp dinner in the Dining Room….sang Happy Birthday to Jerry and toasted to a great cruise aboard the Sun Princess!
Flying tomorrow to New Zealand for a week with our friends Karen & Bob.
Farewell for now…
Six BMK Travelers
Etemadfar/Sarkissian/Tweed-Booth

Maybe a movie? - very windy

This is our first attempt to try to post a Movie

Fiordland National Park

Fiordland National Park

We’re cruising through Fiordland National Park this morning. It’s one of New Zealand’s most majestic natural wonders. Through Milford Sound, the 14 nautical miles to the Tasman Sea are lined with mountain peaks that rise to the heights of 6,000-7,000 feet. Captain Cook missed it entirely when he was charting these waters 200 years ago. Located on the southwest corner of New Zealand’s South Island, the Sound is about one and a half miles wide at its broadest point. Whether rain or shine – Milford Sound receives more rain than any other one place in New Zealand – the views of the surrounding cliffs are simply spectacular.
After breakfast we ventured to the bow of the ship for an up-close look at scenery and to take a few photographs. As you can see by Leila’s hair blowing, the wind was “brisk”. Our on-board naturalist explained the difference between a “fiord” and a “sound”. A fiord is a valley formed by a glacier and a sound is a valley formed by a river. The ship just made another turn into the next fiord so we’ll be back tomorrow. Tonight we’re attending the Captain’s Circle Cocktail Party and another chance to get the fellows dancing.
Six BMK Travelers

Dunedin

Dunedin
Beautiful gardens and elegant old homes grace this lovely city, the fourth largest in New Zealand. Like Christchurch, the city was surveyed and laid out before the colonists arrived, which gives it a neat and tidy air. In fact, we all decided that all of the New Zealand towns seem to be orderly, unrushed, clean, and have a calm, peaceful atmosphere.
Again our day started out with a bus shuttle from the port. Our ride brought us right downtown, a short walk to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. We all bought chocolates and walked down the road munching our candies and into the old Railroad Station, a magnificient stone structure. A leisurely day was spent walking throughout the town. We stopped at a Café for our mid-afternoon coffee or beer and then back to the port town of Port Chalmers.
We are still looking – over, under, and through for Tautara. Last night was a Western Line dance. Tonite Jerry won $250 playing Black Jack.
Rosie thought she found Tutara in the large pile of wood chips at the port.
Shawn though he found the Tutara up on the mountain after the gondola ride.
Dennis though he found Tutara too.
Six BMK Travelers

Valentine's Day, Elvis Arived & Christchurch

Valentine’s Day, Elvis Arrived & Christchurch

The last cruise Leila was our star – this time Dennis became Elvis. He was picked from the audience, taken to the front of about 500 people, given a leather jacket, a blow-up guitar, and a mask complete with hairhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif and sunglasses. He competed with 2 other men also picked from the audience to find out which one could impersonate Elvis the best to the tune of, “Ain’t Nothing But A Houndog”. Dennis won. We can’t tell if he was the best or we could yell the loudest, but he won a Princess Cruise Line Cap……between the 6 of us we probably have 20 hats.
Napier was an Art-Deco style little city. The buildings were built in the 30’s. The cars were old, the art shops had the art-deco flavor. Even some of the men with their suspenders, white shirts, and straw boaters were in keeping with the 30’s era.
Valentine’s Day. One of our favorite places in Napier was a Dollar Store, where we found $2 red men’s ties and glittery, red rose corsages for the Golden Girls. All decked out we went to the Sterling Steakhouse on board for our Valentine’s dinner. The steaks were great, they gave the Golden Girls a red carnation as we left the dining room and then we went dancing. First time this cruise.
Christchurch. We started out by hoping on a bus that was going to take us straight to the town square of Christchurch for $15 Round Trip each. We made it to town square, walked around a craft fare and decided we needed more excitement. We found a “deal”. We could go for a trolley ride, go on a Punting boat, and then ride a gondola up to the top of the mountain that separates Christchurch with Lyttleton where our ship was docked. We thought this would be great fun. It was actually quite a challenge. We rode the trolley, to the Punting boat for a beautiful ½ hour ride. Then we expected to hop on the trolley and go to the gondola. The trolley conductor told us “STOP 8” would be the stop for the gondola. We got off not near a mountain, but right down town. We then asked, “Where do we go to get the gondola”? The conductor pointed to a couple who had gotten off the trolley just before us and pointed and said, “Follow them”. Unfortunately, they didn’t know where they were going. We then asked a street vendor who gave us directions implying that we could walk to the gondola. We weren’t comfortable with that information so we waited for another trolley and asked another conductor. He pointed to a bus stop and said, “catch Red Bus #28”. We went to the bus stop, got on bus #28. To our surprise our ticket to these events didn’t include the cost of the bus ride, but the bus driver assured us that we had a round-trip ticket back to town. The bus ride took us 30 minutes to the other side of the mountain to catch the gondola. The ride was very scenic both on the bus and on the gondola; however, we decided we didn’t have enough time to retrace all of those tracks. We tossed the round-trip tickets and got a free bus back to the ship. We felt like mushrooms, you know, feed us BS and keep us in the dark.
We’re back on the ship heading out to sea.
Six BMK Travelers

Wellington - TePapa Museum & Tuatara

Wellington – Te Papa Museum
Today we hoped off the ship onto a taxi van to take us to the Te Papa Museum in downtown Wellington, the Capital of New Zealand. Wellington is surprisingly scenic and full of institutions integral to the day-to-day running of the nation. Wellington is the third largest city in the country and takes part in rivalry with larger Auckland, a friendly rivalry that perhaps stems from the common misconception that Auckland is actually New Zealand’s capital. Wellington is a major travel crossroads between the North and South Islands.
Back to the Museum. This museum is free to the public and a beautiful, new 6-story building. The first floor brought us directly into the beginning of time and the Tuatara Lizard’s history. Here’s some information we discovered about Tuatara.
Many things happen slowly in Tuatara’s life. One breath can last an hour. It’s eggs take four years to develop, and a year or more to hatch. It can survive for months without eating. But when it needs to eat, the Tuatara can move fast – to catch grubs, small animals, and even seabirds living in the same burrow. It’s teeth are wedge-shaped, and don’t have roots, but grow directly out of the jaw bone. Tuatara once lived all over New Zealand, but now can only be found on a few offshore islands. They live for maybe 100 years, maybe 200, but nobody’s studied them to find out
Now we know what Tuatara looks like – we can really start searching!
Our ship leaves today at 5:30 p.m., so a leisurely walk around the waterfront brought us back to the shuttle stop and back to our ship.
Elvis arrived last night – I’ll tell you about that in another BLOG.
Six BMK Travelers

Maori Village & Kiwi Plantation

Maori Village and Kiwi Plantation
Today we started with a “free shuttle” into the town of Tauranga. When we got off the free shuttle we paid to go on a tour to Rotorua to visit an authentic Maori Village located on a geyser field in an area where New Zealanders come to holiday. This is one of the Pacific’s most active thermal areas, Rotorura is a place of vibrant culture and great natural beauty. The first thing we saw when we arrived were Maori children diving for coins that were thrown from a bridge. When they found the coins they would put them in their cheek to hold them while they dove for the next one. It was explained that this was their “spending money” and they would go to town to buy tickets to the Rugby match.
Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport and is much like soccer (we think). We toured a village where Maori women cook by putting their food in a mesh bag and lowering the bag into a hot spring pool. They would cook all their vegetables that way. The meat and desserts were steamed in a box put over a geyser steam hold for several hours. Everyone shared all the food.
Our next stop was a Kiwi Plantation. We went to the orchard where the Kiwi hung from vines much like a grape field. The Golden Boys had Kiwi ice cream and the Golden Girls shopped. We drank Kiwi juice about the consistency of carrot juice and not too tasty.
Six BMK Travelers

Auckland, City of Sails

Auckland, City of Sails

Karen, Patti Tiboni’s niece, Karen’s sister Linda, and her husband Bob were waiting for us as we got off the ship. They had rented a big van that held all nine of us very comfortably. With more boats per capita than any other city in the world, Auckland is appropriately known as the City of Sails. We headed toward the waterfront drive and went by the house where Patty grew up. We went to “one tree hill” an overlook much like Twin Peaks in San Francisco. We saw the Americas Cup Sailboats from years past. Went up the Skytower for lunch – it looks like the Space Needle in Seatle. However, it’s the tallest tower in the Southern Hemisphere. While we had lunch we watched people who paid $245, jump off straight down 162 meters to a bulls-eye below. Took our breath away! Others walked a cat walk in harnesses, but with no railing to hold on to. After lunch we went to the Observation Floor where we stood on glass and could look down to the ground. It was pretty scarry. We’ll be back on the 22nd to spend a week with our friends in Auckland.
Six BMK Travelers

Bay of Islands

Something happened we forgot to tell you about. At SFO Airport while we were waiting for our plane, Shirley , Leila & Rosie went for a walk and ended up in the Bar. We ordered our drinks, started talking to a guy from Australia when the Bar Tender came over. He wanted to know where we were going. We told him Australia and then we were taking a cruise around New Zealand. He said, “wow, the Golden Girls”, and Leila replied, “and the Golden Boys are right over there”, pointing down the hall. So we’re not sure if this journal should be, “ The Quest for the Tuatara Lizzard”, or “The Travels Of The Golden Girls( and Boys)”.
We have hit land in the North Island of New Zealand and are on the quest for the Tuatara Lizzard. It’s only on this island out of the whole world. Why wouldn’t we look for it? But then, why should we look for it? Well, we are! Jerry thought he saw it under a very big fig tree, but upon inspection it was a rotten fig. Leila thought she spotted it heading out to sea, but it was just driftwood. Then we realized we didn’t even know the size of the lizard. A man here in the Bay of Islands told us that we might see one in a zoo, but we don’t know where the zoo is – definitely not here – we’ll just keep looking.
We took a walk to the New Zealand Mauri Treaty House, went shopping, took a ferry boat ride to Russell Island, a mere 7 minutes away, on the Fast Ferry, where we saw the oldest church in New Zealand. The cushions on the pews were handmade needlepoint. We returned to Paui hia Harbour to find a “Que” of more than 400 passengers waiting to launch to the Sun Princess, at anchor.
It’s Manhattan time – tomorrow we meet Karen, Patty Taboni’s niece, and Bob for our guided tour of Auckland.
Six BMK Travelers ; AKA “The Golden Girls”

No Luck Today
Casino
Our first on-board Blackjack Tournament started today. No luck. Shirley qualified to participate in the finals; Jerry, Shawn, Dennis & Leila didn’t even get close. Dennis went off to play on the computerized Texas-Hold um table. He thought he had a great hand and went , “all-in” with two Aces and two 10’s only to be beat by a full house. Oops, $84 down. When the Blackjack finals came around, Shirley busted on her first 2 hands and when she finally had a little luck getting a 21, so did the dealer. Not to be discouraged, it’s just the first Casino day at sea.
On our second day at sea we arrived at the Casino to qualify for the Roulette Tournament only to find it had been cancelled. Still no luck.
Tomorrow the ship will arrive at the Bay of Isles, New Zealand.
We will be looking for the rare "living fossil" found on the south island. It is a lizard called the Tuatara and it has a functional 3rd eye. The genus and species name is sphenodon punctatus....a fascinating creature that has survived over 300 million years.
Let the search begin.
Six BMK Travelers

Down-Under & Under-Way

We’re Down-Under and Under-Way
I don’t know how many of you have traveled on an airplane for 14 hours, but we can all tell you that we’re mighty glad that is over!
We departed our berth at Darling Harbour in Sydney yesterday afternoon aboard the Sun Princess and navigated our way across Sydney Harbour passing under the Harbour Bridge and in front of the Sydney Opera House. We then altered course to port and and set an easterly course out into the Tasman Sea. Today we’re en-route towards the North Island of New Zealand. The Tasman Sea can be rough from time to time; seas were 8’, winds 20-25K. We’re getting our sea legs.
The weather is a bit cooler than we had expected. It’s around 72 degrees and a little cloud cover. During our Bus Tour of Sydney yesterday the driver told us it was over 100 degrees for the past week and the cooler weather was a welcome change.
Day 1 – At Sea
Six BMK Travelers from New Zealand

Follow your BMK friends on their New Zealand Adventure

2011, February

The Sun Princess will be our new home for next several weeks. It's a cruise that begins in Sydney, Australia after a very long overnight flight. On February 7th we'll arrive at the ship and depart for 2 days at sea and arrive in New Zealand at the Bay of Isles. The itinerary includes Auckland, Tauranga, Napier, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Fiordland National Park and back to Sydney. We'll fly back to New Zealand for a week touring on land. Back to Bel Marin Keys on February 28th.

Hope you will visit our Blog adventures throughout February. We'll share our fun experiences every few days.

Let us hear from you, too, once in a while. It's fun for us to know you're visiting our site with your morning coffee.

Cast the lines....we're off and away.

Shirley & Jerry Etemadfar
Rosie & Shawn Sarkissian
Leila Tweed/Dennis Booth