Where We Forgo The Viking Freebie Auckland City Tour, Go On A Whale & Dolphin Safari, And the Whales & Dolphins DO NOT DISAPPOINT!
Prologue: How it came that we went on a Whale & Dolphin Safari Viking cruises include a freebie excursion for every port, and if you book pre- and post extensions, there’s a freebie flung in for the extension as well. Typically it’s a tour of the city. On this cruise, the first port is Auckland, and even though we’ll be boarding the ship tomorrow (Thursday, December 22, 2022), the ship isn’t leaving Auckland until Friday, December 23. The freebie for December 23 is – a city tour. There didn’t seem to be a point of going on two tours of Auckland, so we decided to do something else on our own. Whale watching! I booked the excursion through Viator, the international tour company affiliated with Trip Advisor.
Back to the story.
After a good night’s sleep, we both felt a lot better. I knew what time of day it was, though the day of the week remained elusive. It was still Sunday as far as my brain was concerned.
When we went down to breakfast, the restaurant was crowded – everybody else was going on the city tour and had to be ready to leave by 8:30 a.m. We didn’t need to start walking over to the meeting spot until 10:00, so we had plenty of time.
We figured it could be chilly out on the water, so we both brought hoodies and long sleeve shirts. We walked over to the spot specified by the ticket, but we didn’t see anybody from the tour company. We found them a little further away – a crowd had already formed by the door.
When we boarded, we headed up to the bow – it seemed like a good idea at the time. Possibly if we had thought about it long enough we might have figured why sitting on the bow was actually not the best idea, but we didn’t.
As the boat got underway in Viaduct Harbor,
the ship captain casually mentioned that the bow is a guaranteed soak zone. Uh. Oh. By that time it was too late – as the boat picked up speed and bounced along the waves, we were repeatedly soaked. Jeans, shirt, jacket, hair, everything. The good news – the sun was very strong. We weren’t cold. Just wet. And we hadn’t really gone anywhere.
It took about an hour until we were in position for potential whale sittings. We passed by beautiful little islands.
The water was very quiet. Saw some birds circling around. Not much else.
And then the the first whale was spotted. Bobbing up, one, two, three times and then diving down for several minutes.
These are Bryde’s Whales (pronounced “Broodie”). There are maybe 200 living around New Zealand. They tend to stay around New Zealand and don’t migrate.
We followed this whale for about 30 minutes – that is the maximum amount of time any one whale can be observed, to make sure it’s not disturbed in its normal habits.
We shifted position and waited again – and another whale surfaced. This one seemed to be really curious about us, and started circling the boat. We could follow its progress by watching the trail of bubbles it left in its wake.
Everybody on the boat ran back and forth from side to side, from bow to stern, with every bubble trail. I was pretty convinced the whale was enjoying making everybody run back and forth.
As we headed back to the port, we saw the signs of possible dolphins in the area. If dolphins are around, there’s fish to be had. So gannet birds follow dolphins to take advantage of the smorgasbord. Gannets dive into the water at amazing speed – upwards of 60 mph. The deeper the fish, the higher the birds go up in the sky, to literally dive bomb into the ocean. It’s pretty crazy.
The dolphins by themselves are pretty awesome to watch. These are called “Common Dolphins” (no idea why). They have yellow stripes on their sides. We saw some mom/calf pairs. All the dolphins circled the boat endlessly, investigating us closely
It was time to head back to Auckland. By now I had mostly dried off, except for a couple of uncomfortable places. My jeans have salt residue, and my hair feels like I spent the day at the beach.
A fabulous 4 1/2 hours!
Afterwards, we had a late lunch at an Italian restaurant, followed up by gelato, of course!
When we got back to the room, it occurred to me we never received final instructions as to what to do on Thursday for boarding the ship. Just as I was calling the Viking emergency phone number, we heard the sound of a doorbell (??). Andy opened the door, and there on the floor was an envelop with our final hotel bill and – the instructions for tomorrow. I wondered if the instructions were provided during the morning’s city tour.
We need to have our bags out in the hall by 7:30 a.m., then check out of the hotel by 11:00, and then we’ll be bussed over to the ship – which we can see from our hotel.
Tomorrow: The Viking Orion
Maryland Meshugas 