The Travel Sage
Holland America New Zealand Cruise
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On February 11th, 2023 Mark and I and our friend Dave set sail on a cruise from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand. This 14 night cruise on Holland America’s ms Noordam was set in the middle of our 5 1/2 week trip that began with a short stop in Oahu.
A few days before the cruise, while were staying in Sydney, we learned that a cyclone was headed toward the north island of New Zealand at a time when Auckland was still recovering from record flooding. I was concerned that our cruise could get canceled but thankfully the storm only resulted in two of our scheduled ports closing and a date change on another port. Luckily, the ports we missed weren’t ones I was especially excited about, and Holland America replaced one of those ports with a stop in Wellington, which is New Zealand’s capital. So other than me having to scramble to reschedule our plans around the new itinerary, all was well.
Our first full day on the ms Noordam was at sea, which was nice since it gave us a chance to rest a little and get acquainted with the ship. On our second day the ship docked in Melbourne, which would have been an awesome stop if we hadn’t just spent a week there. Ships dock in the town of Port Melbourne which is just south of downtown. We could have easily reached Melbourne on one of the shuttle buses but instead we opted just to walk around the vicinity of the ship.
The 3rd full day of our cruise was spent in Tasmania, which is an Australian island state directly south of Melbourne. The largest city in Tasmania is by far Hobart on the southeastern side of the island, but our cruise docked in Burnie which is on the northern Tasmanian coast. Options for things to do there were fairly limited, so we chose to take a day tour out of Burnie to see Cradle Mountain. There were quite a few tour operators offering day trips to Cradle Mountain, but we chose Cradle Coast Tours which we booked through Viator. We chose this particular tour because it had great reviews and a maximum of 7 passengers. Well, as it turned out, there were twice that many people on the tour and we didn’t think our guide was as wonderful as most of the reviewers did. Despite the few disappointments, we saw some beautiful scenery.
Our first tour stop was Fern Glade Platypus Reserve. We didn’t get a glimpse of any platypuses, but we did see some cute little marsupials called pademelons.
Photo taken by Ali M Saeed
We drove quite a while through the countryside before arriving at our tour’s primary destination – Table Mountain.
After Cradle Mountain, we took a stroll on a nearby trail called “Enchanted Walk”. The area was dotted with wombat dens. Unfortunately, no wombats were out and about during the middle of the day, but it was a pretty trail.
Tasmania was our last stop in Australia on this cruise. When we left port that day we set sail for New Zealand. We had 2 full days at sea while our ship crossed the Tasman Sea. I enjoy sea days because they are a chance to relax between busy sightseeing days, but my ideal cruise itinerary doesn’t have more than one sea day in a row. Thankfully, this was the only time we had multiple sea days lumped together. Mark and I spent most of our time lounging around on our balcony – him reading and me writing my travel blog.
I really like ships that have pools with retractable glass roofs. It’s a great place to relax on a sea day especially when its cold and sunny.
The ship’s captain gave a lecture about the ship’s mechanical systems. I found the information somewhat interesting but the highlight for me was his dry humor.
Early in the morning after our second day at sea we reached our first destination in New Zealand – Milford Sound! This was the place I was most looking forward to seeing in New Zealand, even though we were only cruising around the sound and not actually getting off the ship there. (However, if you have a few extra thousand dollars to spare you can take a ship’s excursion that lets you off at Milford Sound and does an overnight on land and then meets back up with the ship the next day.) It was before dawn as we approached and I headed to the ship’s bow to get a good look. My initial reaction was confusion since it looked like we were headed directly into a stone wall. But as we got closer, I could see a narrow channel opening up in front of us.
I was amazed at how narrow the channel was and how tall the fjords were that towered all around us.
Milford sound was just the first part of our day of scenic cruising. Our next destination was Doubtful Sound followed by Dusty Sound, but the views were beautiful all day – even en route to our destinations.
We spent the day going back and forth between watching the scenery from our balcony and the various decks of the ship.
After our relaxed day of scenic cruising, the next stop was Port Chalmers, which is just outside of Dunedin. We opted for a great tour that gave us a very brief overview of Dunedin and then headed out of town and into the country. That was a pretty busy day so I’m going to make a separate trip report for it (coming soon).
The following day our ship stopped in the small town of Timaru, New Zealand. There wasn’t really much to do there so we just visited the little craft festival that was going on and then walked through the city to Timaru Botanical Gardens. It wasn’t the kind of Botanical Gardens that I’m used to, it was more like a nice city park. But it was a pleasant place to walk and look for birds.
After we left the gardens we walked through the nearby cemetery because, strangely, I find cemeteries very beautiful and interesting. The cemetery was close to the coast so from there we caught a trail called Hectors’ Coastal Track, (In New Zealand they call trails “tracks”.) and headed back toward our ship.
The walk along the coast wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped and when we got off the track to get back to the ship we had to walk through a rather unpleasant industrial area. I was starting to think we would have been better off visiting the Timaru’s most popular spot instead – Caroline Bay Beach. But after we got back on the ship, I realized that the view from our balcony was looking out at Caroline Bay, the towns’ “best” beach, which was situated right next to the port. Overall, I’d say this was my least favorite port stop of the trip. However, our friend who was cruising with us, spent the day on his own in Timaru and fell in love with the little town.
The port after Tiramu, was my favorite stop of the cruise. We docked in Picton, which is on the northern tip of New Zealand’s south island – this town is located in a maze of waterways called Marlborough Sounds, which is actually made up of 3 sounds – Queen Charlotte Sound, Kenepuru Sound and Pelorus Sound.
I knew that the scenery coming into Picton was going to be spectacular so I got up before dawn that day to watch it from my balcony. I was not disappointed!
Me, Mark and our friend Dave had two excursions planned that day. The morning tour was a private flight over Marlborough Sounds in a small, single-engine plane, and it included a 20 minute stop at a remote beach. Our afternoon excursion was a “mail boat cruise“. The people who live in the more remote areas receive there mail via boat since traveling by car would to get to these places would take way too long. So, the local government had the ingenious idea to use large tourist boats to deliver the mail so that us tourists could pay for the mail service. Our day in Picton, NZ was too eventful to try to include in this already long post, so check out the separate trip report I created for our cruise stop in Picton. Below are a couple preview photos of that post.
The ship left Picton in the early evening and headed across the Cook Strait to Wellington which is New Zealand’s capital. Wellington wasn’t on our original itinerary; the stop was added when two of our scheduled ports were cancelled due to the typhoon. Luckily, Wellington was a more interesting destination than the places we missed! According to Trip Advisor, at the time of this writing, the top 3 things to do in Wellington are 1) The New Zealand Museum (Te Papa Tongarewa) 2) Zealandia Ecosanctuary and 3) the Wellington Cable Car. We had hoped to do all 3 of those things while in port. We decided to make Zealandia our priority of the day since it is a unique place; the first of its kind in the world. Zealandia is a 500+ acre fenced sanctuary that was created in order to give native animals, especially birds, a predator-free place to thrive. New Zealand, as well as Australia, has a huge problem with non-native mammals, that were brought into the country by settlers, decimating their population of birds. The birds in Zealandia are wild but they choose to stay because all of the non-native vermin have been removed from the site and are kept out by a specialized designed fence over 5 miles long.
Given that Mark and I like to bird, this place did not disappoint! And in addition to rare birds, Zealandia had some beautiful scenery.
Wellington operates a free shuttle to and from Zealandia, making it really easy to access the park. On the way there we caught the shuttle stop at Wellington’s waterfront, but on the way back we took the shuttle to the other stop which is at the top of the cable car. I had thought about taking the cable car both up and back but the line was outrageous going from the bottom up – probably due to the 2,000+ people on our ship! I’m really glad we didn’t wait in line because the cable car was a disappointment. It was a very short ride and you only got a good view for an instant. Much of the ride was underground, but at least they decorated the tunnels with lights.
After exiting the cable car it was a short walk along the waterfront to the New Zealand Museum. We didn’t have a lot of time left but we figured we’d check out a little of the museum, since it was free. Unfortunately, by the time we finished in the gift shop it was just too late to get started. It’s too bad, because we heard really great things about it. I guess this is a good reason to have to come back to Wellington.
The day after Wellington was my 20th wedding anniversary. I had planned out a fun, relaxing day in port with dinner in a nice local restaurant. But when the typhoon screwed up our itinerary, our anniversary became a day at sea. So, for something special, I made reservations for one of the ship’s specialty dining restaurants – Canaletto. The food was very good throughout the cruise, so I was primarily looking to find a restaurant with atmosphere that would feel special. Well, a few days before our anniversary, we were eating in the buffet for dinner and it dawned on me that the corner of the buffet seating that is blocked off in the evening was actually the Canaletto. That’s the opposite of the special atmosphere I had in mind.
Luckily the hostess in the main dining room was willing to reserve a window table for our anniversary, and that turned out to be a little special.
The night of our anniversary was also Noordam’s “Orange Party”. Apparently it’s a thing Holland America does because the Dutch wear orange.
At this point there were only 2 days left in the cruise – the port of Tauranga followed by a day at sea. In reality, the Port of Tauranga was in the small neighboring beach town of Mt. Maunganui. Most of the tours offered from this port took visitors to locations over an hour away. One of the most popular tours was the Hobbiton movie set tour for the Lord of the Rings fans. Most of the other tours went to the town of Rotorua and its surrounding attractions. We debated between exploring Mt. Maunganui on our own or taking a Rotorua Highlights tour which included a stop at Whakarewarewa, which is the only traditional living Maori village still in existence. I really wanted to visit the village, so the only reason for the debate was that we were spending two nights in Rotorua after the cruise and I didn’t know whether we’d have time to do everything we wanted while we were there. I’m really glad we opted to take the tour from the cruise stop, because as it turned out, I was too sick to do much of anything during our stay in Rotorua. I’ll be creating a separate trip report for this Rotorua tour, but I’ve included a couple of preview photos below.
The last day of the cruise was advertised as “scenic cruising” in the Bay of Plenty. Thankfully, I didn’t expect much so I wasn’t too disappointed when all we saw were a couple of points of interest from quite far away. But Mark managed to get a good zoomed-in photo of Whakaari / White Island which is an active marine volcano with 70% of its mass below sea level. On December 9th, 2019 a massive eruption of the volcano killed 22 people who were touring the island on foot. Land tours are no longer offered but you can take a tour that flies over White Island.
On this last day of our cruise I was coughing a lot but I figured it was just my allergies. But that night I kept waking up coughing. We were disembarking that next morning, so I took a Covid test just in case it was positive; then I could get a note from the ship’s doctor which would allow me to file a claim with my travel insurance if our travel plans got messed up. Unfortunately, it was positive, but fortunately, we were able to stay in the Airbnb’s that we had booked, and our flight home was scheduled for the first day the new CDC guidelines allowed me to travel. It was a bummer that I missed out on the activities I had planned to do on New Zealand’s north island, but I guess I was lucky I didn’t get sick sooner and have to be in quarantine on the ship.
Overall, it was a great cruise. The food was great, the ship wasn’t too crowded and we loved our cabin! It was a great way to see New Zealand.
4 thoughts on “Holland America New Zealand Cruise”
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The Travel Sage strikes again! Another gorgeous and informative and fun entry. More later!
The Travel Sage strikes again! Another gorgeous and informative and fun entry. You didn’t see any platypuses but you did see Pademelon – very cool! Table Mountain looks a little scary to me but strangely beautiful, and the Enchanted Walk does look enchanted. The Milford Sound exit does look narrow. Doubtful Sound sounds if it would be chancy, but I guess it wasn’t. The landscapes around these sounds are strange to me, like the landscapes of dreams.
(By the way, I like cemeteries too!) The scenery from Picton does merit a WOW! The dolphins breeching is a great photo – I’ll have to check to see if you did that post yet. SO glad that you went to see the Zelandia Ecosanctuary. Great shot of the takahe! And glad that your anniversary was nice, though not what you planned. Too bad you got sick at Rotorua, but I guess better than getting sick at the beginning of the cruise and have to be in quarantine for longer on the ship – that would have been maddening!! And we don’t want any mad ‘ini’s about do we? All in all a great trip or at least a great trip to read about and see photos of!
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