Kiwis in New Zealand

Near the North Island of New Zealand, white island is privately owned and still has sulfur spewing up from the volcano there. When asked why the guy who owns it bought the island, he said he just thought it would be neat to own a volcano. The other geysers are from a geo thermal reserve near Tauranga, New Zealand in a town called Rotarua (Roto Ruwa.) You can practically see the sulfur stink can’t you?

The last photo is of the infamous Kiwi bird. Kiwis are nocturnal and their habitats are created with very very low light, which is why the photo looks kinda like a blob with a pencil beak, but take my word for it, that’s a kiwi.

Katie

Glow Worms

When I was a kid, I had a little toy glow worm that glowed in the dark. I always thought it was the coolest toy, but I never imagined the real thing might actually exist, or that I’d have a chance to see it one day. Glow worms are found only in Australia and New Zealand. They are translucent and it’s actually their poop that glows. Bugs are attracted to the tiny luminescent dots in the dark caves that the worms life in. The bugs fly to toward the light and get caught in the worm’s sticky lines that they hang around them.

The worms are very sensitive to light and sound so only our guides had lanterns to take us through the caves. We weren’t supposed to take any photos, but of course I had to sneak a few. I had my flash off and I waited until the guide was talking so no one heard the click on my camera. When they had all the lights off it just looked like a million tiny blue stars around us. The shots I took are from waist level looking straight up. The last photo looks kind of wormy, but it’s actually just me moving the camera during a 30 second exposure. The worms themselves are long and clear and there’s a dot of light they emit at the tail end. This was an amazing sight to see.

Katie

Christchurch, New Zealand

I was able to do my first tour in Christchurch, New Zealand. I was so lucky to have this tour in particular because it went by a location where they shot Narnia. For the first half of this tour I went on a long ride out of Christchurch up into the mountains. I went on an off-road adventure on winding dirt roads to some amazing vistas. Next the site of the chronicles of Narnia shoot.

Katie

Christmas and New Years

Christmas and New Years on the ship was great. There’s always a nice dinner for the staff upstairs on Christmas day. I had shrimp and steak with plumb pudding for dessert. The shore excursions manager brought party popper things with paper hats and little toys. It felt like a very British Christmas.

Then New Years Eve was one wild party all over the ship. I got pictures with Gene, my friend from my past two ships, and Sydney who I just met this contract. Gene is very short, so I had to squat down, since I was in heels and towering at about 6’2” Sydney is around my height, she’s the one I’m not crouching next to. All the crew were decked out in their finest partying until the wee hours of the morning. I called it quits around 2am, but I was told the party didn’t stop till 5.

Katie

Dry Dock is Done

I’ve been supremely busy this cruise. It seems to me that dry dock caused more problems than solutions. Certainly it needed to happen, but when the contractors left and all the water and power was turned on around the ship, there was chaos. Pipes burst, rooms flooded, lights and sound didn’t work, and who was left to clean up? That’s right your faithful crew who also had to prepare to take on an overbooked ship of passengers on their Christmas cruise in a matter of hours. Needless to say, the ship wasn’t ready. We had a really rough start to this cruise, and now almost two weeks later, when the cruise is nearly finished, we are finally starting to get everything back to the way it should have been from the beginning.

After doing five days of work alone, my assistant arrived. He’s Filipino and his name is Edmark. I’m told that traditionally in the Philippines parents will give their children a mix of their two names, like Edna and Marcus make up Edmark. He’s proved to be a great assistant. He had to jump right in and start work having come from a short vacation and from a completely different department, he was food and beverage before, luckily he was equal to the task. He’s nice and sweet, a little shy, and I think I’ve finally convinced him to stop calling me Ma’am. Made me feel like a school teacher.

Here are shots from the last day of dry dock when they put the propellers on our ship again. They are massive and so cool looking. They are the only part of the outside of the ship that isn’t painted over. They had one wrapped in plastic because they were painting the hull of the ship. I took another picture of the front of the ship because there happened to be two dock workers having a cigarette break below. I did a really long exposure so they are kinda blurred, but that little white blob on the ground next to the ship is two people.

Katie