AKAROA-January 28th

We arrived in Akaroa on Sunday the 29th.  We went by tender since it is a not a large island in NZ although equally very scenic like all the other islands we've been too.  There are only about 600 people living on the island year round  We had no tours scheduled and just got off the pier to look around.  We were in port only there for about 10 hours - that was long enough.  The town consisted of about 20 stores in total. 9 of them were restaurants, coffee houses and bars.  The town is used for summer vacationers from Auckland and Christchurch although I am not sure why. The only sport the town offered was a swim with the Dolphins.  There was only one lane of traffic only going through the center of town so I don't suppose that have too much traffic even when all the tourists are in town.

It took us about 1 hour to walk through town and there were not too many interesting things to see.  I believe it is more of a chance for the people who work aboard ship to stretch their legs more than anything else.

The Seabourn has a FREE "French Fete" that they invited passengers to attend.  It was to visit a winery and listen to some local music and a somewhat known NZ opera singer.  Well we don't drink wine and Len can't taste cheese and both of us are not into much opera so we turned back out ticket so that some other people could go.  About 200 passengers went.  It was mayhem in the Grand Salon while people lined up to get on board the tender boats to go ashore and we were glad we didn't attend.


The tender trip took about 25 minutes to get to the pier  The temp was perfect though and the sun was shining brightly. Len took just a few interesting photos. This was in front of a Thai restaurant and is carved out of 3 watermelons.

There was a huge palm tree that we stood under and a local took our picture.

The town was originaly founded by a Frenchman however he was 1 day late to claim it and an British captain claimed the island first.  The French, having travelled as far as they wanted settled here and so that is quite a bit of French influence in town 


As I said earlier, the town is so small there was not many things to photograph but Len did use the bathroom and shot an interesting picture inside, Here is a urinal and an enlarged picture of the "Aim" spot.

As I said before there was not much to see in Akaroa!
We are almost 9000 miles from home and still have a lot of water to sail in.  Skuttlebutt says we are in for rough weather!