Today was a day of travel, logistics and briefings with a beautiful short hike at the end.
We were up early to make our 6am meeting time. We picked up our packed breakfast to take on our 3 hour bus ride from Queenstown to Buff. There were beautiful views of the Remarkables (a mountain range near Queenstown) but we couldn’t really see out the foggy bus windows. There we were in a bus with huge windows going from the seat up to the ceiling and we couldn’t see out! That was ok since I napped/rested/slept most of the drive anyway.
We have a very good group- we had 10 minutes to take a bathroom break and everyone was back on the bus just before the 10 minutes expired- can’t remember when that last happened on a trip. They also help get everyone’s luggage where it needs to go- this is actually not quite as nice as you’d expect since someone may take your luggage without you noticing and then you get to spend time trying to find your luggage.
We left the hotel a bit late but made up the time to catch our 9:45am ferry from Buff to the town of Oban on Steward Island. It’s an hour long ferry ride. It was a beautiful and smooth trip. We did hear from multiple people that it’s usually a very bad crossing and lots of folks get sick and throw up. That’s why it is also known as Vomit Alley. I’m so happy we had a smooth trip. It’s important to catch the ferry since it can only leave at high or low tide because when the tide changes the currents into/out of the Harbour make it impossible for ships to enter/leave.
We walked from one side of the town to the other to catch a zodiac to our ship- the Heritage Adventurer. Of course before we could get onto the zodiac we had a briefing on how to put on life vests and how to enter the zodiac. On the zodiac to the ship we had a glimpse of a little blue penguin in the water.
We checked in but our rooms were not ready yet and we went straight to lunch. After lunch we were shown to our room- it’s quite large and has lots of storage space.
Quite a few people were already on the ship as they were on a prior cruise that they combined with this one.
After lunch we had our safety briefing, emergency response training, another more detailed zodiac briefing and a short presentation about the ship.
Then we were put into groups and taken to Ulva island by zodiac. Ulva island is a predator free island and we took a short walk (about an hour) thru the native forest looking for native animals. We saw the tiny round Rifleman bird going in and out of its nest at the base of a tree.
I did see a few native New Zealand birds today on the walk on Ulva Island
After the walk we took the zodiac back to the ship, had dinner, a shower and off to sleep- even though it was still light outside.
