We are getting closer to land, sailing among the fjords. But it is still essentially a sea day because we didn't get to get off the ship. We didn't get up early enough to see the ship enter Milford Sound. That is supposed to be the best of all. We heard about some excursions for about $1,000 that people get off the ship at Milford Sound, go on a river cruise and then hop on to a train or bus to get two ports ahead before getting back on. That sounds interesting but maybe not worth spending $1,000 after paying for the cruise.
In the morning, we went to learn about the port of Auckland, where we will be in a week's time. We miss the presentation on Bay of Islands because we went to a class, or workshop as they call it, about the language of Maori. Well, it is indeed more a workshop than a lecture. First we all went to the stage forming a circle and pray. Doing things in a circle because according to Maori traditions, we should be able to see each other when doing things together. The language class is very much hands-on. We learned to introduce ourselves using the freshly-learned Maori in front of each other. Naturally some of us did better than the others. Then we learned about numbers followed by a game involving using the numbers. We were supposed to form groups of the said number when she said it. However, we all cheated by looking at the number of fingers she held up. We also played a game involving left and right. We had a lot of fun although the chance of retaining anything from the lesson is really small. She said that is typically how they get the children to learn. I totally agree those are good methods except it is really tough to teach these old dogs new tricks.
We got back to open sea early evening. The water has been choppy over the last few days going across the ditch. Hopefully it will get smoother off the East coast.
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