New Zealand

Our family has shared sickness since Thanksgiving. Roy and I were not spared catching cold and spent the month of December trying to recover. Just as I felt we were at the end of it, I felt a new cold coming on, right in time to board the airplane on Dec. 27. After traveling to LAX, we had a few hours layover to get ready for our long, upcoming flight to Auckland, New Zealand. I could feel the cold coming on, but I thought it would be of short duration, since I'd already been struggling with a cold for a month. Unfortunately, even though I slept many of the 13-hour airplane ride, the cold persisted.

We had a day to visit Auckland before we boarded the ship for our cruise. We took a taxi up to the sky tower to get a view of the city. We were informed it would be a 45 minute wait to board the elevator, so we decided to get a view from the top of the city. The worker at the sky tower suggested a walk on Mt. Eden.

See the sky tower in the background.

Our hotel in Auckland

My cold persisted, but I didn't feel terrible and was sure that by the time we got on the cruise I'd be doing much better. Our cruise began on Monday, Dec. 30 (we lost an entire day on the flight as we crossed the international dateline). We had a delicious lunch and walked around to acquaint ourselves with the ship. I wasn't able to hold down any dinner, so Roy went and found something without me. He also went to the evening show. By the time we went to bed, my throat had started to really hurt and I told Roy I might need to get it checked out. Of course, it's not something I really wanted to do on the cruise, but when I woke up and my throat felt engorged, I thought I might have strep throat and proceeded to the medical center on board. I told the nurse that I was worried about strep, and that if I didn't have a fever or spots, it didn't mean I didn't have it, since I've tested positive before without those signs. I told her I hadn't had a fever in all of my adult life. She took my vitals and my temperature and said, "Well you have one, now." I had a temperature of 102 degrees and my heart rate and blood pressure were high. The nurse took some tests and ruled out strep, influenza, and covid; however, I did have a severe throat infection. The doctor came in and told me I needed antibiotics and he wanted to quickly get them into my system, so I was given the medicine intravenously. I spent most of the morning there, getting the treatment, and the rest of the day both Roy and I slept in the room. Luckily we had a full sea day to rest and try and recover. Along with the sore throat, I couldn't hold anything down. I didn't feel that sick to my stomach, but even touching food or liquid to my lips made me immediately throw up. By the evening I was worried about dehydration because I'd been told to make sure I stayed hydrated. I called the medical center again. This time the nurse came to my room. She took my temperature, which was now 104 degrees. She fetched a wheel chair and took me down for a 2nd IV, this time with antibiotics and hydration. I was on this IV for 2 hours. Later the nurse told me that I was very close to being sent off the ship for treatment at a hospital as my infection had been septic.

I felt a lot better the next morning, but still had another IV of antibiotics. They had me leave the PIC line in so that the treatment could be continued if necessary.

After this 3rd IV, we met for our shore excursion in Wellington, NZ. We took a tour to see some sites where the film Lord of the Rings had been made. The first stop was a city lookout. Wellington is a very windy city, getting weather from the antarctic and also from the north. Depending on where the wind is coming from determines how cold the weather is. It wasn't cold while we were there, but it was rainy.

We stopped in forested area and took a short hike to see where the first scenes of the movie were filmed. At this time it was just drizzling, but as we made our way to Weta studios, it began to rain in earnest, luckily the rest of our tour was inside. Weta studio was interesting. Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings, has set up camp here and is only making movies in New Zealand. We were shown how the different faces, feet, hands, etc. were made for the filming of the movie.

Hobbit forest

Weta studios

Our next tour was supposed to be a swim with the dolphins the next day in the city Kikuran, but because the weather was so dicey, the captain made the call to stay an extra day in Wellington and skip Kikuran (there would have been a good chance we couldn't tender there). On our 2nd day in Wellington we went to Zealandia, which was a sort of natural zoo. We walked around there for a few hours watching the birds and other interesting wildlife. The most interesting was the tuatara, The tuatara is not a lizard nor a skink, but has the skull structure of the dinosaur. They come out in the day, find a spot, and rarely move. We were able to see some because the naturalist put up magnets on the fence where she had seen some previously. They were hard to spot because they held perfectly still.

Tuatara

Zealandia

Kaka bird

We had to be back on the ship by 3:30 to leave by 4:00.

Our next stop was Christchurch. Our tour took us through the city that approximately 10 years ago was hit by devastating earthquakes. The city normally has about 20,000 earthquakes per year, but only a small portion of those are large enough to be felt. Although much had been rebuilt, there was still scaffolding everywhere on various buildings in stages of reconstruction. The bus ride continued on all day throughout the beautiful countryside of New Zealand, again to show us some areas where the Lord of the Rings had been filmed. No sets had been left up, but the scenery was awesome. The only disappointment was that the weather was so gray and rainy. it was impossible to see the mountains in the area that had been backdrop to various scenes in the film. We saw where they had built the set for the city of Edoras, The site they found for this had perfectly fit the description of the city in the book; a city built on a rock. Again, it was awesome and beautiful, but the majestic mountains in the background disappeared in the mist. This was an all day tour and included a lunch, which was a catered lunch in the middle of nowhere. It was perfect for me since I was in recovery mode, and sitting on the bus was easy. I didn't have to get out in the rain very often.

There are huge mountains behind the small rock mountain. We couldn’t see them.

We had another tour the very next morning. This was a walking tour of the city Timaru. We probably should have just toured the city on our own. The tour guide was a single mom who had started this tour business with her extended family. She was nice, but not very professional, introducing us to her kids and various other relatives as we ran into them on the street. She also didn't have a lot to say about the city and was hard to hear as she hadn't learned to look at her tour group and speak up. It was a slightly disappointing stop in our itinerary. At the end of our tour, we hopped on a shuttle to go back to the ship. The pilot that was scheduled to lead our ship through the fjords got on the shuttle with us. We asked him questions about how he would get off the ship while it was in transit, etc. he was quite interesting to talk with.

Above: Timaru

Our last tour of the week was in a city called Oban. It was a darling seaside town with only a few shops and cafes. On our other tours we'd been hearing about a thriving industry here where they sheer the Merino lambs and make merino wool. In this town we finally had a minute to shop. There was a small shop with clothing made from this wool. It is so soft and warm. I have had long johns made out of merino wool that I've loved. We were excited to buy a few clothing items here such as gloves, hats, and shirts,

Merino sheep

We also had an excursion here. We boarded a boat and went out on the ocean to an island and saw seals and many birds, particularly albatross. We were lucky to see four different species of this bird.