Fjord-ward ho!

 Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Yes - I'm writing this post on January 3, but it's all about yesterday, Tuesday, January 2, 2024, and our cruising through New Zealand's Fjordland National Park around the southern end of New Zealand's south island.  In Maori it is called "Te Rua-o-te-moko" (the Shadowland) and includes 14 fjords on the western coast of NZ.  the fjords reach up to 40 km inland, along 200 km of rugged western coastline. Rain falls in Fjordland over 200 days each year and yesterday (January 2) it was certainly cloudy, rainy (a bit) and very cool and windy!  But the views - oh the views were spectacular!

First views of Fjordland National Park from Deck 17 of the Majestic
(windows are a little streaky)

Sailing by the fjords

Majestic fjords from the "Majestic"

Waterfall at the fjord

Leaving the fjord

We cruised in/around the fjords all day, but getting there presented its own adventure, as our ship's captain was really bookin' to get us there.  We were probably doing 16+ knots to get there and that was causing the water in the swimming pool on deck 17 to become a mega-wave pool - pretty impressive!

Carl got a video of me trying to navigate the pool - mostly just holding onto the railing for dear life!  Will try to upload here but the file is huge!

After spending our morning and early afternoon up on Deck 17 taking in the fjords and enjoying the pool, we finally came back to our cabin around 2 p.m.  I was planning to just collapse, but Carl suddenly was hot for us to do our last loads of laundry before the cruise ends.  So, we packed up all our dirty clothes and I schlepped them down to the laundromat on our deck.  Lots of people had the same idea and most of the machines (washers and dryers) were in use.  I finally found a washer where the load was finished (but no one had come to empty it out yet) and I decided that if the cycle was done it was ok for me to empty their clothes from the washer and put my load in - that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  I would have done that with the dryers too, but some of the clothes in the dryers when the cycle ended were still damp.  Eventually Carl wandered down and when our 2nd load was out of the washer, with no dryers available, I gave him a dryer token and told him to take the load down to the laundromat on the next deck and see if there was an open dryer.  Thankfully there was!  Now, we're all done with laundry until we get back to the states!

Had an early dinner in the Symphony Dining Room - it was Italian night!  Dinner was done surprisingly early.  Dinners have generally been a 2-hour affair each evening.  Last night we were actually done in an hour!  We had some time to burn, so we went to the early show with our singer Chantelle Delaney.  Nice enough singer, but the crowd at 7:30 p.m. was pretty dead.

Just before 8:30 p.m. we wandered over to Effy Jewelers because we'd had an invitation in our room to attend their "last call" sale and have a little champagne and get a "free gift."  They know us by name there (that's dangerous)! The "last call" sale was two cases of items marked down 60%!  I saw one pair of pretty sapphire and diamond baguette earrings that were very pretty and even tried them on but as soon as the salesman started making his 'pitch' I told him I've bought ALL the jewelry I'm going to on this cruise!  He didn't press the point.  My free gift was an Effy pen on a keychain. They had another drawing for a gift (blue tickets this time).  I didn't have any blue tickets, so my favorite salesman, Jack, gave me two tickets and Carl even got a ticket!  We weren't winners though.  Tonight (Jan. 3) and tomorrow, they'll do their final evening drawings for free gifts for customers who've bought something during the week.