I received this email today from Dreps, he is on the Mariner right now.

Hi everyone,

The tender met the ship in Milford Sound and 30 of us boarded for our excursion. We went on a short ride to the Marina and boarded our motorcoach. The driver, Jock, was a Scotsman and the guide, Graham, was from NZ.

We traveled south through Fiordland National Park to Te Anau. We made several stops for photos. The weather was very nice, though cool.

At Te Anau we went to a bird sanctuary for injured birds, and I have a number of pictures of unusual birds. We had lunch at the Kings Gate Hotel and it was good, though not fancy.

Then we departed for Arrowtown. Along the route there was some road construction and one of the road crew had left his grader with a blade exposed, and it nicked one of our tires and we had an immediate flat. Both Graham and Jock were of retirement age and not in shape to change a bus tire. Fortunately, our Radisson tour guide, Nico (from Belgium), was in good shape and he managed to change the tire. Getting the 10 lug nuts off and finding and mounting the spare and then tightening the lug nuts was quite an operation. I have several pictures. During the tire change, we had gotten off the bus and were walking and standing along the road. It was pretty warm at that point. The whole even took about an hour, but in the end it meant we missed stopping at Arrowtown because we had to get to the jet boat at a certain time.

The jet-boat ride along the Shotover River was great fun. We have a great picture taken by the boat people of our group in the boat. Gail loved it. I liked it too. They do outfit you in a waterproof coat and a life jacket. You go through very narrow gorges and the operators do a number of 360 degree turns. Pretty exciting. The boats were said to be invented in NZ in the 1950s.

Then, we went to Queenstown to check into the St. Moritz Hotel. The hotel was very nice. We had a suite overlooking Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkable Mountains across the lake. The suite had a living room, dining area, kitchen area (including washer/dryer)—I should have brought our laundry! We freshened up and met in the lobby to walk to the Boardwalk Restaurant. Apparently, lots of dignitaries eat there when in Queenstown—there was a picture of Bill Clinton. We had a very good dinner—excellent grouper (which they called groper). Then we walked around the town a little. We should have skipped dessert.

After breakfast at the hotel, we took a gondola ride up to Bob’s Peak. I have some pretty neat pictures. It had rained overnight and the mountains surrounding the town really had quite a bit of snowfall. My acrophobia wasn’t too bad.

Then we drove to Middlemarch via Clyde and Ranfurly. We ran into some very heavy rain, but by the time we arrived at Middlemarch the sun was out for us to board the Taieri Gorge train. It was really a neat trip down to Dunedin and I took lots of photos. A box lunch was served during the train trip.

We arrived at the Dunedin Railway Station and went on a brief sightseeing tour of the city, which is known as the “Edinburgh of the South.” Apparently, the city is laid out like Edinburgh. We also saw the steepest street in the world (they say). Of course, I have pictures. Also stopped at Otago University, which was pretty nice.

We then left for Port Chalmers to reboard the ship, which we did about 5:30 PM.

Today we are docked in Lyttleton, which is about 25 minutes from Christchurch. It is very cool—not sure it’s even 60--and cloudy today, but the 80% chance of rain did not materialize. We took the shuttle provided by the cruise line into Christchurch. Walked around a bit. Took the tram. Did a little shopping. We did walk in the Botanical Gardens, which were nice and must be spectacular when the weather is nicer. We also walked in the Cathedral. Since both Gail and I are still fighting some sort of cold/sinus infection, we decided to come back to the ship for lunch. We are scheduled to depart here for Picton at 6:00 PM. In Picton, we have signed up for a mussel and wine excursion, which involves a lot of time on the water so we are sure hoping the weather improves.

More later.