Wet and Windy in Auckland

15^thOctober 2019

It was a bumpy ride to Auckland overnight, with the strong winds and big seas continuing through the night. Fortunately the wind had abated enough by the time we arrived at Auckland Harbour to allow us to head to out berth at Queens Wharf. It took a while to secure the ship, as it was still gusty and raining steadily.

Approaching our berth in Auckland Harbour

Coming alongside our berth

Eventually we were settled in alongside and customs clearance was given for disembarkation. We were not in a big hurry, as around 1000 people are disembarking and chaos in the gangway area was likely. The weather was also appalling with heavy rain squalls continually passing through. We are very glad we did not bother to book any shore excursions here.

At just after 9 am we decided to venture ashore in light rain and gusty SE winds. Hoping to get a few NZD so we could get a cup of coffee and maybe some lunch later on, we struggled to find an ATM that was in working order in the port area. After walking around past the ferry terminal and viaduct area, we eventually headed up towards Sky City Casino where we found machines that were not out of order.

A rare sight today, the top of the tower is visible during a break in the weather

The rain continued, and we found our way to Queen Street and settled in to a nice café for a cup of “real” coffee. We wandered around for a few hours, the weather did not improve, and we looked at a few places for lunch but failed to find anything inspiring, so ended up back on board at around 1pm and had some excellent green lipped mussels on the boat.

Bargain hunters queued up outside a Gucci Store that has a sale on

Ruby Princess at her Auckland Berth

As the day progressed the new arrival started flocking onto the ship and it will be interesting to see what the new composition of passengers looks like as many of the Americans, Canadians, (and of course most of the Kiwis) appear to have disembarked here.

More rain

Finally by around 3.30pm, the weather appears to be clearing and there are patches of sunshine. At least the rain has stopped but the skies are still very overcast. Fifteen minutes later it is raining again. By 5 pm it has fined up and hopefully tomorrow will be a nicer day.

All aboard time is 5.30 pm, so there is little point in going back ashore, not that there is anything else we wanted to see. Had the weather been nicer, we may have taken a ferry ride out to one of the islands.

Departing Auckland

Departure from the port was at around 6pm in much nicer conditions than we arrived in. We have a short run down the coast to Tauranga, although getting out of the Gulf of Hauraki is a tortuous path, and takes some time.