Viking Description: Tauranga, nestled on the Bay of Plenty, is watched over by the dramatic Mt. Maunganui, an extinct volcano that helped shape this spectacular region of white-sand beaches and azure waters. The Māori arrived here in the 13th century, followed by the British 600 years later. Today, the city is home to a thriving cultural scene and stunning vistas of mountains rising from the surrounding waters. Tauranga is best known as the gateway to the bubbling mud pools and thermal fields of Rotorua. The local Māori believe this cauldron-like region to be a gift of fire from the gods.
We woke just as the ship was docking in Tauranga, our first port of call after Auckland. We pulled open our shades to the sunrise and lo, the only lights we saw were the golden arches. New Zealand is truly a great country.
We had a relatively light breakfast. I would have been fine with the plate of fruit I started with but couldn’t resist the Asian cup of scrambled eggs with Chinese sausage, topped with a variety of spicy enhancements. Why hold back?
We had an early 7:45 check-in for our excursion, the only one included at no extra charge. There were other optional tours to Rotorua or to learn more about Maori lifestyles but they cost extra. Here was the description for our excursion:
- Scenic Bay of Plenty
- Duration: 3 hours, starting 8:00 AM
- Rolling Farmland and Kiwifruit Orchards
- Take in the beautiful scenery of the Bay of Plenty as you discover more about the kiwifruit capital of the world. Meet your guide and board your motor coach as you set off through Tauranga, crossing the city’s harbor to Te Puke. Pronounced “tay-pookey,” this is New Zealand’s premier region for the production of the nation’s namesake fruit. During your panoramic ride, you will learn more about the orchards that pepper the surrounding landscape. At a local village community hall, enjoy refreshments and a taste of locally picked kiwi, along with free time to browse for kiwi-inspired products and mementos at a boutique marketplace. Members of the local Māori tribe will welcome guests, then provide entertaining insight into their culture. Reboard your coach for a drive along Marine Parade, with panoramic views over Ocean Beach and the Bay of Plenty, before arriving back at your ship.
The description was technically accurate but the excursion itself was disappointing. Our bus driver/guide was a laconically funny and mildly racist old New Zealander who was at least relatively knowledgeable about the flora and technical aspects of the kiwifruit trade. I’m not sure of the actual route we traveled but we basically drove for nearly an hour while the driver related tidbits about the development of the kiwifruit industry in New Zealand. Evidently the immediate vicinity around the town of Te Puke was ground zero for kiwifruit production.
As the bus rolled along we saw more and more agricultural land, much of it surrounded by large windbreaks. These were often tall cryptomeria trees, not unlike the trees we have between our driveway and our neighbors, trimmed tightly like a 30-foot high hedge protecting an acre or two of land. It made me wonder how bad the wind was and how much trouble it must be to maintain these neatly trimmed giant hedgerows. Unfortunately, the bus never stopped anywhere to take a good picture.
Likewise, the bus didn’t stop when we passed several hills that clearly had been intensively sculpted and terraced in centuries past. The driver commented that they were old Maori settlements but he gave little background on who would have been there, how long ago they left and under what circumstances. The details were left to our imagination (or further research — it turns out the terraces were more for defense than for agriculture). I began to wonder if there was a Maori Machu Picchu somewhere offering a glimpse of what these hilltop communities might have looked like. These areas must have been fairly densely populated to support the level of terracing work.
After nearly an hour our guide drove us down a very pretty road that gave us a good view of the distinctive kiwifruit vines (originally Chinese gooseberry until it was given a marketing makeover a few decades back). Unfortunately, there was still no chance to stop or get out to get a good photo and I was on the wrong side of the bus to even try for a shot.
Our only stop was at a dingy little community center near Te Puke where we were offered tea and cookies (biscuits) then ushered into an auditorium ringed by tabletop displays of kiwi-based products. Some Viking buses were already leaving and others arrived while we were there — this was evidently an event conjured up solely for cruise ship excursions. There didn’t seem to be any other traffic. There was an emcee on the stage who extolled the wonders of the kiwi plant for about 20 minutes but the soundsystem was poor and he was hard to understand. Eventually he haphazardly introduced a Maori family in native dress (“and now for a bit of culture”) who performed a dutiful but out of place set of songs in Maori, including a haka from the males. There was no explanation of what the songs were about and they were competently if unenthusiastically performed. It was all a bit sad and cringey. I couldn’t bring myself to even take a photo. We sat for 45 minutes absorbing the culture before the show started repeating itself, then it was back on the bus and back to the ship.
Nearing the port and our ship, we drove through the little town of Mount Maunganui which had an impressively nice beach. In retrospect, we might have been better off skipping the excursion and just wandering around the town and walking by the beach, though I’m not sure how much we could have accomplished since we had to be back on the ship by 1pm for departure. I don’t know if any of the other excursions, e.g., to Rotorua (an hour away) were any better. You know it’s a bad excursion when I didn’t take any photos whatsoever. It was a rocky start to our excursion experience.
We were docked in an industrial port in Tauranga that had stacks and stacks of logs cut and ready to be shipped. We would see this again and again in New Zealand. Evidently, these trees were fast growing American radiata pines that are cultivated throughout New Zealand and shipped to China and Southeast Asia for processing into paper or building material. There are heavy restrictions on cutting or exporting native New Zealand flora but there’s a big market in these particular commercial pines. We never saw much evidence of the logging/harvesting but we saw an awful lot of logs waiting to be shipped from nearly every New Zealand port we visited, and we saw lots of trucks and trains with tons of the logs on the move. Officially, dairy and meat products are New Zealand’s top exports and I guess that’s what might have been in most of the containers we saw (there were a lot of them as well), but these stacks of wood — like so many toothpicks — were by far the most common product we saw in the ports.
We departed Tauranga (which we actually never even saw) at 1:30pm which gave us better views of Mount Maurangui than we got from the tour. It was another beautiful day with perfect temperatures in the mid-70’s. I watched as the tugs helped pull us away.
Before departure, Barb and I had a bit of fish and chips for lunch then Barb met up with Karen and another woman for chatting and commiserating. Later, she went with the other women to tea. I spent the afternoon watching the departure show then succumbed to trying a cheeseburger from the Pool Grill even though I really didn’t need anything.
I went to a 3pm lecture on New Zealand history which I actually wanted to hear but I ended up dozing through most of it. Fortunately it was recorded and we watched most of it later that evening; it was a somewhat helpful overview if one could stay awake through the drone of our resident historian. I also went to a 4:30pm talk about our next destination, Napier, and was able to stay awake through that. I went to one more lecture at 6:30pm about New Zealand geology that was mildly informative but the resident geologist was even more scattershot than the historian. I was not immediately impressed with the educational quality of the onboard lectures.
Having said that about the lecturers, I will say one of the best things Viking did was televise each of the lectures and port talks so we could see them in the cabin and not have to go to the theater if we didn’t want to. They also made each of the lectures available on demand for the remainder of the cruise. They became Barb’s preferred viewing each evening and I daresay we were some of the few people that watched nearly every lecture. Some were better than others, and we ended up watching many of them more than once trying to glean some threads of educational value. It was very nice to have the option of viewing them on-demand. They were also great to have something to fall asleep to. Otherwise, the TV viewing options were fairly limited: a hodgepodge of old movies, documentaries, news channels and shows we’d either seen or didn’t want to see.
For dinner, we went to The Restaurant relatively late, near 8pm and were seated at a prime table at the aft window of the ship, just in time for sunset. The sunset itself was brief and not at all colorful, despite some scattered clouds in the sky. I was still waiting for a good New Zealand sunset.
Our dinner was pleasant: Barb had appetizers of shrimp and prosciutto and melon, I had a barramundi fish cake and Chicken Kiev which was tasty but no threat to Ah Chen’s version.
After dinner, I went to the top deck to check out the stars while Barb hung out in the room. I was surprised to see Orion and its companion which I thought was Leo but it was actually Canis Major…my constellation knowledge was rusty. Jupiter was prominent near the crescent moon which was very pretty. I saw a cluster of stars that may have been the Southern Cross but I couldn’t say for sure — I had never seen the Southern Cross (I guess I never thought to look when we were in Argentina) and it was one of my goals to see on this voyage. I also saw at least three satellites march across the sky which surprised me.
While I was out on the rear deck I got a text from Barb that the Viking astronomer was going to do a star gazing session that evening but I couldn’t really decipher her note (“Get your quiet box as the astronomer will be giving a lecture outside tonight per the Viking guy”) and I was ready to come back to the room anyway. It turned out that was a mistake — it was the only clear, dark night of the voyage and I missed what was evidently a good session. We had no prior knowledge of the process, but it turned out the stargazing sessions were a last-minute negotiation each evening between the astronomer, the captain and the cruise director. If conditions were good, the captain would agree to turn down the outside deck lighting and the cruise director would make an announcement at the end of the evening’s main entertainment show in the theater. Barb happened to be watching the live feed of that show in the room so heard the announcement that the star gazing session would be happening which prompted her text to me. But I didn’t figure all that out until later. As it was, we stayed awake until nearly 11pm before we turned the lights out. We were close to being over jet lag.
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