Cruise day 53 – Feb 26 This stop takes the cake as the shortest cruise stop we’ve ever experienced – four hours! To make it even shorter the ship was anchored, meaning almost an hour of that time was spent going back and forth to the island on the tenders. But on the plus side, we got in a good […]
Cruise days 48,49 – Feb 21,22 We enjoyed our 2-day stay in the medium-sized city of Cairns (pronounced “kanz”), which has a population of around 150,000. We took 2 excursions on this stop, the included Cairns Panorama Tour on the first day, and then an excellent optional full-day journey on the second day, the Great Barrier Reef Tour. Cairns Panorama […]
Cruise days 44,45 – Feb 17,18 Our visit here in Noumea, New Caledonia was not on our original itinerary and became a first time stop for Viking. The ship apparently re-routed here (two days of out-of-the-way sailing east from Brisbane) to allow Viking time to plan further revisions on the way to Bali, and the following segment to Mumbai. The […]
Cruise day 41, Feb 14 Another fairly rough night at sea due to big swells and big winds (it’s getting old) had us arriving at another big city, Brisbane (pronounced Brisbin). The approach to the dock was long and slow, as it’s located several miles up the Brisbane River from where it meets the Coral Sea. Brisbane Panorama Tour – […]
Cruise day 34 – Feb 7 After leaving Dunedin’s harbor we sailed around the southern tip of New Zealand and cruised through Doubtful Sound. After looking at the jaw-dropping landscapes there we continued on to Dusky Sound. These weren’t stops for the ship, but rather a day of sailing through some of the most gorgeous glacier-carved sounds in the world […]
Cruise day 30 – Feb 3 Today we docked at Dunedin, completing our last port stop in New Zealand and the first month of our cruise. During the first week as we crossed the Pacific Ocean it seemed like four months at sea would be forever, but now that we have a fourth of it completed time is flying by! […]
Cruise day 29 – Feb 2 We pulled into the bay of this mountainous seaside city around 7:30am and set anchor. This is the New Zealand we remembered from our honeymoon cruise in 2006 – gorgeous mountains surrounding small towns spread around a massive crater that created the terrain millions of years ago. Last time we had stopped at bustling […]
Cruise day 28 – Feb 1 After leaving Rotorua, our next scheduled stop was at Napier the following afternoon. The winds were strong on the way there, so strong that we had trouble doing our laps around the deck without getting blown over: As we approached Napier’s port the wind got even stronger, and I noticed that the ship had […]
Cruise day 26 – Jan 30 Visit Rotorua (Port of Tauranga), New Zealand – Another brief stop at a beautiful place that we wished we had a lot more time to explore. As all cruisers know, although cruising has many upsides for travelers, one downside is that the stops are too short – usually one full day (or less) each. […]
We (Steve and Mona Liza) retired early at the beginning of 2012, sold our house and almost all of our belongings and moved into our RV. We are pursuing our dream of traveling the U.S. and Canada for several years and seeing everything and everyplace we can.
