Akaroa/Christchurch, New Zealand

Saturday, January 10, 2015

We tendered in to the port of Akaroa

Golf Day.  Yay!  We're playing golf today at Clearwater, a small residential country club in Christchurch.  This is our last round of golf on the trip and I'm so happy we're playing with Bruce and Gail.

The two hour drive to Christchurch took us up and over the pass which was only about 1500 feet above sea level, but the curvy, narrow roads made the trip seem much longer.  The view from the top was spectacular.  We could see the ship anchored below in the Akaroa Harbour.  I'm a little sad that we don't have time to drive through the town of Christchurch.  I remember the devastation that I saw last year after the earthquake of 2010 that almost destroyed the whole town.  I wanted to see if progress had been made.  But our bus driver said the town is literally relocating as the ground is still moving in Christchurch.

Golf at Clearwater with Bruce and Gail.

We arrived at the golf course slightly behind schedule, so we skipped lunch and went right out on the course.  Today, we had a caddy to help us navigate the course.  Accurately named, the streams and lakes here at Clearwater are spring fed and crystal clear, which made it easy to see our golf balls resting on the bottom, seemingly mocking us.   After a few holes, our tour host, James, brought sandwiches and meat pies to us.  Thank goodness!  I almost got hungry!  The sandwiches were excellent and the meat pies, a dish well known in New Zealand, were quite tasty, too.  

We had a blast playing with Bruce and Gail.  I actually had a great round, with two birdies, the last being on the "show," hole #18, with a gallery of Vintage Members witnessing my 40 foot putt.  I scored 88.  Way better than my average game.  But there were some rather generous gimme putts.   So I guess it wasn't a true 88.  But that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Bus ride back to port.

The ride back to the ship clocked us in the bus longer than the golf match.  Four hours of bus for four hours of golf.  Guess it worked.   After all ... I did shoot an 88!  If I'd shot 108, the bus ride would have seemed like 10 hours!!  

Top deck of the Tender ride back to the ship.

It must have seemed like 10 hours anyway, because we were both exhausted and just ordered room service for dinner and watched our sail away from the balcony heading for our next port of Timaru.

I'm sorry for not posting updates daily.  The wifi is really bad on this ship.  It's taken the entire day today, while at sea, to work on two posts.  I'm really disappointed in Regent's satellite wifi.  I've been to the "help" desk and the poor guys simply shrugs his shoulders and says, "Everybody is using the internet and it is just going to be slow. "  It may be faster and more efficient to use two cans and a string to send this message out!!  Get with the 21st century, Regent!!