Sydney

After 29 days, we finally arrived in Sydney, Australia.  While having our last buffet breakfast, we enjoyed a 5-star view of Sydney Harbour and the Opera House, before lining up to disembark the boat.

In Sydney, we spent 2 days exploring the city proper and 3 days doing day trips around. 

Sydney is a beautiful city with so many things to see while walking around: The Opera House and Darling Harbour, China Town, The Royal Botanical Garden and all the roads and neighbourhoods in between.

We were really impressed with Sydney and no matter where we walked, we found so many cute streets, restaurants, cafes, and shops that were interesting to check out and window shop.

One funny thing that happened was that when we were in Calgary booking our hotel for Sydney, we forgot about the date differences between Australia and Canada so we accidentally booked our stay at East Sydney Hotel for 1 day too early!  

The hotel wasn't able to shift our stay by 1 day because they were full on the last day so we ended up booking 2 additional nights at Maze Backpackers.  This worked out nicely because when we checked out, the hostel receptionist gave us a great tip:

"If you have a lot of time before your flight, you can take the train from Sydney Central Station to Mascot Station - the station just before the airport.  From there, it’s just a 1.5km walk to the airport domestic terminal, and the fare only costs $2.65 instead of $18 because you don’t have to pay the airport surcharge”

So that’s what we did.. sidewalks, crosswalks, and flat all the way!  Getting really great travel tips, is one of the awesome benefits that we've noticed about staying at hostels instead of hotels!  


Vancouver to Sydney Cruise

We decided to join Jen’s parents on a 29 day cruise on Royal Caribbean's Ovation of the Seas, from Vancouver to Sydney, Australia.  

Here are the stops that we did along the way:
First Leg (8 nights)
- Vancouver, Canada
- Seattle, USA
- 5 sea days
- Maui, USA (2 days)
- Honolulu, USA

Second Leg (20 nights)
- Honolulu, USA
- 5 sea days  - crossed the equator
- Moorea, French Polynesia (2 days)
- Papeete, French Polynesia
- 5 sea days - crossed the international dateline
- Napier, New Zealand
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Picton, New Zealand
- 2 sea days
- Sydney, Australia

Equatorial Crossing
If you have never sailed over the Equator before, you are known as a Pollywog.  Between Hawaii and French Polynesia, we crossed the equator and the cruise director performed an Equatorial baptism ceremony.    They poured some of Neptune's cold water from the Northern Hemisphere, and then hot water from the Southern Hemisphere, onto each Pollywog's head.  I guess we are now considered Shellbacks and even have some nice certificates to prove it 😂

"Equatorial baptism is an initiation ritual sometimes performed as a ship crosses the Equator, involving water baptism of passengers or crew who have never crossed the Equator before. The ceremony is sometimes explained as being an initiation into the court of King Neptune. Sailors who have already crossed the Equator are nicknamed Shellbacks. Those who have not crossed are nicknamed Pollywogs."

Dateline Crossing
Between French Polynesia and New Zealand, we crossed the international dateline.  For us, Saturday Oct. 22, 2022 was completely lost - it is an entire day in our lives that just never existed.  We went to bed on Friday Oct. 21st, and when we woke up the next morning, it was Sunday Oct 23rd 😃!


Activities

We enjoy sailing with Royal Caribbean because they have so many activities available to keep us occupied, particularly on the big Quantum or Oasis class boats.  Here are some of our highlights:

Pickleball, Old-school Rollerskating, Volleyball, Dodgeball, Ping pong, Dance Fitness

Trivia (progressive, music, dingbats, tribond, etc.), and Educational Seminars on French Polynesia and crime scene forensics

The North Star

Lounging on the deck

Let’s not forget the flowrider where Dom passed a lot of his time. Some days he would only do 3 runs every hour but he got lucky on colder days and even got the Flowrider to himself for 45 minutes once…it was a cold day. 

Some of the other activities on the boat included Soccer, Basketball, iFly, rock climbing, bumper cars, dance and sushi-making classes, origami/scapbooking/towel/napkin animal folding lessons, and movies/games on the pool deck, but we didn't participate in any of these this time.


Entertainment
Piano guy in the elevator.. and he was good. 

Evening shows and Silent Disco


Crown & Anchor Status
Besides spending time with Jen's parents, another reason we decided to do such a long trip was because Royal Caribbean was offering double-status-points to try to entice tourists back onto the boats post-covid.  By the time we completed both legs of the cruise, we both managed to attain Diamond status, meaning we will now be able to get our own free drinks!  Dom was SO excited about his new status (even though he doesn't drink.. go figure 🤷😂)

Food and Drinks
Since Jen's parents were already Diamond members before this cruise, we got to sample some of their free drinks every day.  We had fun trying different kinds of mocktails and cocktails.  Some of our favourites were: strawberry daiquiri, mudslide, piña colada, dark and stormy, sangria, lava flow, sexy ocean, and the painkiller.. just to name a few. 


As usual we really enjoyed the dining room food and ate way too much at the beginning.  It took us about 20 days before we learned to pace ourselves 😂


Room
Thanks to Jen's mom, we were able to upgrade to balcony rooms for the first leg of the cruise.  For the second leg, we got to experience an inside room with a Virtual Balcony (80 inch TV of a live "balcony" view of the ship) for the first time.  Of course it's not the same as having a real balcony, but we must say we were pleasantly surprised at how effective it was at tricking us into feeling that we had a window view since you could at least see what it was like outside!


Unfortunately, Jen and her parents for COVID at the end of the trip, however, Royal Caribbean was nice enough to provide each of us with our own separate rooms, free room service, free internet, and medication for covid symptoms.  Dom had to get tested every morning, but as long as he tested negative he was allowed to continue enjoying the outside world while everyone was isolating. Overall, we felt they treated us and the situation very well.. we're sure it's not an easy thing for them to manage / deal with either.


Hiking in Picton

Picton was the last of our New Zealand stops.  

Since Jen and her parents were still in quarantine, Dom decided to go on a 12km round-trip hike out to "The Snout", to explore the peninsula.


As the boat departed Picton through the Marlborough Sounds, we saw some really great views of the coast.

Wellington

Our stop in Wellington was rainy and cold.  Jen and her parents were sick, so Dom was the only one allowed to disembark.

He took it easy and visited the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum, the City Gallery, and wandered along the main streets. 

The Te Papa museum had a few interesting exhibits including a section on the First World War Gallipoli Campaign, with giant wax statues that were incredibly realistic! 


The City Gallery wasn't particularly interesting, however there was one interesting exhibit where you could watch "2001 Odyssey" and the "Thriller" music video with all of the people removed from the footage, because the artist wanted to explore the backgrounds of videos without the distraction of the people them 🤷‍♂️.

Cycling in Napier

After another 5 days at sea, we arrived at our first stop in New Zealand - Napier. 

We rented a couple of bikes and headed South along the nicely maintained, coastal pathway. 


Over the 40km ride, we were rewarded with perfect riding weather and beautiful scenery.  We also saw the biggest asparagus and aloe plants ever!  😜


Napier is famous for its art deco architecture, so before heading back to the boat, we took a stroll down to main avenue and admired all the art-deco style buildings.

Tour of Papeete

The capital city of Tahiti, Papeete, was our last stop in French Polynesia.  In the morning, we wandered around town to explore the local market, the cathedral, and strolled through the gardens at the Assemblee De La Polynesie Francaise.


After lunch, we took a tour of the island and stopped at 6 different sites: 

  • Taharaa point 
  • Venus Point
  • Waterfalls of Faarumai
  • Aarahoho blowhole
  • Vaipahi garden 
  • Maran Arahurahu 

The trip was about 5 hours long with quite a lot of driving.  Some of the sites were quick "instagram" stops and others were in areas that you could wander and explore a bit more.


The stop at the Aarahoho blowhole was particularly special.  When we arrived, we didn't see much to look at but fortunately we had a guide to point it out to us.  

When the waves crash into the rock-wall along the shore, the air is forced through a small tunnel that ends further up the shore.  Check out the video of Dom quickly discovering the impressive amount of wind pressure that comes out of the hole!


Every night, a bunch of food trucks gather in the square next to the cruise ship dock.  We took advantage of the opportunity to taste a local speciality called “poisson crue”, which translates to "raw fish".  The portion size was quite large so it was a good thing we shared.  The national dish is made of sushi-grade fish marinated in lime and fresh coconut milk - sounded so simple but it was SO fresh and delicious!  We would definitely have it again.

Kayaking and Snorkelling with Shark and Rays

After hiking Magic Mountain, we headed back to the Gauguin Pier to meet up with Jen's parents.  While waiting, we strolled to the local church to watch the church choir dancing and singing church-songs, with local instruments and style.  It was really beautiful.

We took a taxi to the Plage des Tipaniers on the North side of the island, where we rented kayaks from Tip Nautic for about $10usd per kayak/hour. 


We paddled out to a sandbar ~1km away and tied our kayaks to the floating anchors that were out there.  We put on our snorkel gear and hopped into the water to swim with the black fin sharks and the stingrays that typically hang out in the area.


After returning the boats, we hung out around the beach for a couple more hours and checked out the fish in the lagoon

The island of Moorea has 2 main bays.  The Western bay is named Cook's Bay, in honour of Captain James Cook, the first European to dock on the island in 1777.  Moorea is also the island where, 12 years later, the Mutiny on the HMS Bounty occurred with Captain Bligh.  
The Eastern bay is named Opunohu Bay, which means "stomach of the stonefish".  Stories of stonefish are common in the folklore of the island.  The extremely venomous stonefish like to bury themselves shallowly in the sand of the island's lagoon, making them very hard to spot. There are many stonefish hospital visits here each year because if you accidentally step on one while wading the waters, it can be very dangerous.  So it is highly recommended to wear shoes with thick soles and avoid walking near rocks/coral, when wading in the beautiful lagoons here! 


Fortunately the beach locals warned us which areas of the lagoon to avoid in particular and we also wore our sandals in the water just incase.  We managed to avoid any incidents with stonefish, but Dom did have a fun encounter with a Damselfish while trying to capture some pictures and videos in the lagoon!  Apparently these guys get very territorial during breeding season.. checkout his footage of "Damsel vs the GoPro":



Magic Mountain Moorea

We started the second day with an early morning hike up Magic Mountain since it was easily accessible from the Paul Gauguin dock.  The area around the mountain is privately owned, so we paid $2 usd/person to enter.  

The walk was along a paved road where tourist vehicles would occasionally pass by.  We spotted a number of different fruit trees along the way including mango, papaya, lime, and banana, unfortunately, since we were on private land, we were told not to pick any of the fruit.  After about 45 mins exploring the 3.3km hike up, we reached the 180m peak where we were rewarded by yet another beautiful view of the island and surrounding lagoons.

We overheard one of the tour guides explaining that Moorea is a volcanic island (an atoll).  All of the dramatically steep "mountain peaks" along the horizon, were all part of the volcano caldera.  The 2 large bays on the North side of the island are areas where the caldera collapsed, giving Moorea it's unique "heart" or "butterfly" shape when seen from above.  To learn more about how the beautiful atolls were formed, checkout this site: Formation of atolls and islands illustrated.


Motorbiking Moorea

After leaving Honolulu, we spent five days at sea before arriving at the island of Moorea, in French Polynesia.  

The cruise itinerary originally had a stop in Bora Bora, but in order to preserve the island's ecosystem, the authorities stopped allowing large ships to dock there anymore.  The itinerary was changed to stop in Moorea for 2 days instead.  This actually ended up being perfect for us as we were able to take more time exploring the island in more detail.

Dom was excited to finally travel to a place where he could speak French with the locals.  It sure came in handy for getting directions, understanding the motorbike instructions, and figuring out the local taxis!

On our first day, we rented motorbikes and drove the ~60km clockwise loop around the entire coast of the island.  


Our first stop was at the Belvedere lookout where you can see a view of Mount Routui.  The road to get up here was rather steep and winding - a bit unnerving since none of us had been on a motorbike in some time, but the warm scenic ride up was definitely worth it!

After travelling and hiking in so many different places around the world to see so many viewpoints, sunrises, sunsets, etc., we figured this would just be another typical viewpoint.  To our delight, this viewpoint showed us what an absolute magical paradise Moorea is.  We were all blown away with the stunning scenery.  The turquoise colours of the sea, the light mist, the lush vegetation of the forest - it was unreal.  It felt like we were on the beautiful island from Jurassic Park!  

We spent a pretty long time taking pictures here, but sadly, the pictures don't come anywhere close to conveying how magical and stunning the island felt in real life.


On the way back down, we stopped by the side of the road to see the local pineapple plantation.  As we strolled through the area, we could smell the sweet pineapple scent every once in a while.


The next stop was at the Routui juice factory where we sampled some juices and alcoholic beverages.  The Tahiti Drink - Strawberry Daiquiri was the best, so we bought a carton (for about $10cad) to enjoy on the ship.


Lastly, we stopped at the Toatea viewpoint where we saw a beautiful view of the Sofitel over-water bungalows hotel and surrounding waters.  We were amazed at how beautifully turquoise and clear the water was - the pictures of Moorea really don't capture how breathtaking all of the views were in!


We then completed the rest of the island loop to returned the motorbikes and taxied back to the ship for a late-afternoon lunch.  

There was a beautiful sunset over the island that evening.. the perfect way to end our adventurous day in paradise.

Honolulu

After Maui, our ship stopped in Honolulu.  

This was the final stop of the 9-day Vancouver-to-Hawaii leg, so the ship was super busy with passengers disembarking and new passengers embarking.

Since we were continuing onward to Sydney, we decided to spend a few hours visiting Honolulu.  Walmart provided a free shuttle bus from the pier to a Walmart near Waikiki beach so we took that into town and then had a relaxing day window shopping and strolling along Waikiki Beach while people-watching all of the beach-goers and surfers.  


Internet on the ship is rather slow and expensive (ie. $30 usd/day), so we also used the opportunity to find some free internet hot-spots to get caught up on all of our messages and emails, while Jen's parents got caught up on all of the latest photos and videos of their baby granddaughter 🥰.