Oceania

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The sunshine capital

Nelson is the Sunshine capital of New Zealand, recording the highest sunshine hours per year. Well, that’s arguable as nearby Blenheim hotly contest that title. After lunch and a nap, Marie and I walked on the long and broad Tahunanui Beach near the airport.  Gorgeous … makes me want to move here.  We collected Kim […]

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Killing another day

We have a day to kill today, with our departure at 2200 tonight.  Plans for horse-riding and various other options got washed away by the rain.  We took it easy, really easy.  In fact, we went back to bed after breakfast! After a late lunch around 1400 at Cafe Ra’a (again), we wandered to the […]

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More moais

The West Coast Today we set off in a different direction after breakfast.  We drove along the west coast of the island.  We were on a dirt track rather than a road, which took us to Ahu Tepeu’s small colllection of moais.  There were also elliptical and round rock bases of old houses.  We didn’t […]

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Near-death experience

Rano Kau Crater We headed out in our Daihatsu Terios after breakfast, heading south behind the airport runway, going uphill towards Rano Kau crater.  The crater is located in the south-western tip of the island.  It was also where the park admission fee was collected. Rano Kau crater was a beautiful sight, not just with […]

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Rapa Nui

Flying to Easter Island The flight from Papeete to Easter Island took about 5h.  The LAN Chile 767 Business Class seats were like the old Air New Zealand First Class ones.  It had good pitch and seemed very wide.  I had a good but short sleep.  Two snack/breakfast services were offered for the flight.  Neither were […]

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Killing the day

Today, we have a day to kill, about half of it without a hotel room.  We have our flight to Easter Island departing after midnight. We started with a simple breakfast of cereal, stale baguettes, pate and cheese.  We relaxed till our checkout time of 1100 and transferred our luggage into the Crew Lounge for […]

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And then there were three!

After breakfast, we topped up on supplies from the supermarket.  It was a relaxing day followed by dinner at the trucks.  Today, it was roast chicken with a tamarind sauce plus chicken stir-fry with salted mustard greens.  Yummy again! This evening Rodger joins us.  After dinner, we set up his bed in preparation for his […]

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Moorea day-trip

We woke around 0900 which meant it was too late for the early boat to Moorea.  We took things easy and walked to town for the 1200 ferry, operated by the Aremiti 5.  It was a very big and smooth ferry and it took only about half hour to make the journey across to Moorea. […]

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Relaxing

With the time difference from Auckland, we woke around 0930 today.  We walked to the Carrefour supermarket promptly to get some food supplies.  It’s expensive here so we didn’t want to eat at the hotel.  While inside Carrefour, we had a delicious thin pizza and followed up with a toasted panini outside once the shopping […]

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Arriving yesterday

As we had crossed the International Dateline getting to Rarotonga and then Papeete, we landed on Saturday 15 October, a day before we had departed.  But just barely, as our arrival was at around 2340. Kim organised for us to get on the crew transport to the crew hotel, the Intercontinental Hotel, where we had […]

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