Turns out the mobile top-up we bought yesterday wasn't the right sort, so we're a bit short on cheap mobile data today.
The ship is docked in the Bay of Islands. There's no port here where the ship can pull up alongside, so we have to go ashore via tender. Our plans here were always to either stay onboard and do lots more nothing, or possibly to go ashore and to the closest town - Paihia - to have lunch and wander around a little before returning to the ship.
First part of that plan worked ok - we decided to go ashore as it was a lovely day. We didn't have to wait too long for a tender, and the ride to shore wasn't at all rough. We walked around to Paihia - there are shuttles but the walk along the shore is very nice.
However, when we got to Paihia we discovered that they were in the middle of a nasty problem - the power was out - actually in the whole of Northland, not just Paihia. So, no ATMs or EFTPOS (except in one or two little shops that had their own power), and most of the cafes and restaurants had to shut. This is a bit disastrous for them - they're heavily tourist dependent and cruise ships usually bring in a lot of money to the area - there would have been a lot less today.
One group was going well - the St Johns Ambulance was running a sausage sizzle which wasn't affected because they were cooking with gas, and they were doing a roaring trade!
As I said, we had planned to stay in Paihia for lunch - and a decent coffee - but with almost everything closed or only doing partial business there was no chance. So we went back to the spot where the tenders pick you up - I walked but Paul got a shuttle. We didn't have to wait for a tender, we just got straight on the one that was there. However, as we pulled away they realised one of the engines wasn't working, so we had the slowest tender ride in history - seriously, on land, you could have run faster. Fortunately though, the sea was really calm so it wasn't too uncomfortable.
While waiting for dinner time we watched from our balcony as the ship left, and we saw a stack of dolphins - here's one of them
The captain's announcement tonight assures us that although the Tasman Sea is notorious for bad weather, that our trip back to Sydney should be smooth sailing.
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