Day 36 – Monday, February 9, 2025 – Picton, New Zealand

I can say we both honestly tried to find the disabled friendly tour in Picton. I tried for months before getting here. Mary spent the last few days before Picton researching and calling. We just could not find anything. It turns out one guy we thought we had a lead with actually quit the business a while ago. He still has active websites out there so I wonder how many people call him every day. Anyway, it was decided we were gonna go on shore and see what we could find.

Because we did not have a schedule, we went to breakfast on seven. There was nothing special about breakfast but I did try eggs Benedict which was pretty good. I might have to have that in the future. From breakfast we got off the ship on the 5th level. The only way into town was on a bus. Thankfully they had buses that were accessible. I barely fit between the seats. I thought to myself, I wonder how some of these other people with bigger chairs actually got into town. Not really my problem – just curious. The bus drove a good two or three miles into town. There was one drop off and pick up spots so that helped. We got off the bus. The 1st place we stopped was a whaling museum. It was exactly that, a museum that discussed whaling through history. It was only a two room place, but it was pretty interesting. There was one section that talked about the voyages of James Cook. He was the first one to map Queen Charlotte Sound which was used by future travelers for years. He also tried to handle race relations between the Europeans and Maori.

Now that I think of it, it was a strange museum. About half of it was devoted to whaling, but the other half seemed to be devoted to things that were old. In my mind, several years ago someone said we want to build a Museum of things from Picton. Do you have anything old laying around in a closet or garage that we can put in this museum? I say this because there were desks, bikes, sewing machines, medical supplies, baby baskets, etcetera. They had nothing really to do with whaling. I'm not complaining. It's just an observation. We were there for about 30 minutes before we headed back to the street. At the top of the hill you turned right. There were about three or four blocks of shops on either side of the road. You could tell right away it was the definition of the tourist trap town. Again, just an observation. Mary was thirsty so we stopped at the corner bar restaurant. I had a Boom Town IPA and Mary had a soda. We sat there for quite a while actually. We just watched the people. With some liquid on board, we went down the street. I'm going to ask again. Hopefully you will get it if you did not get it the first time, what did we end up doing next? If you said postcards you get an extra pat on the back. We found post cards and were told that we needed to go down to the post office. It was on this side of the street towards the end. It was one of those things where we saw post office on the sign with an arrow. We followed these signs for two or three blocks until all of a sudden there was no sign for post office. A lady happened by with her two little dogs and Mary asked her. Like just about every country, we visited so far they don't have post offices. They've moved the function of the post office into things like the grocery store. We ended up talking to this lady so long she got a parking ticket. Actually, I should say Mary asked her questions which led her to getting a parking ticket. Anyway, in part of that conversation she said that the post office had moved into the grocery store. We happened to be standing outside of the grocery store.

In previous visits to foreign countries, I always like going into their grocery stores when I can. They are fascinating. You get to see what the everyday people of the area eat and drink. Without much surprise, this grocery store had two full aisles of wine and about 6 different kinds of soda. You get the idea. The one thing that I noticed was the portions. Everything was smaller than what we see in the states. I don't have an exact example, but things that you would think to be 12 ounces were only 6 oz here. You did not see a lot of American names. Although, Mary did find Listerine and Cheetos. Yes, they had Monster Energy but I already have about 15 on the ship so we didn't have to buy any more. Mary also bought stamps. Right outside the grocery store was the mailbox. She popped them in there and we were on our way. We walked our way back to the bus pick up point. Along the way, we stopped at a bookstore and Mary bought a couple of books from New Zealand authors.

We made it back on to the ship without issue. It was Super Bowl Sunday in the states. Where we were it was actually Super Bowl Monday. By the time we got back to the cabin it was a few minutes before half time. I set up the GoPro camera to do a time lapse of the area where the logs were brought in and stacked. It's kind of cool. I also set it up to do the time lapse of the ship leaving Queen Charlotte Sound. Picton is miles into the Sound, so leaving Picton to the Pacific took an hour of awesomeness.

 By time these were done you guessed it the dinner time, you guessed it, dinner time. Mary had salad and lemon chicken. Vanila vegan ice cream was her dessert. I had d a red blend wine, which wasn’t great even after breathing. I had salad. I had Alaskan stew appetizer – shrimp, chunks of fish, scallops in a broth – really, really good. I had Tandoori shrimp. I knew it was Indian cooking. I tend not to like some Indian spices. I have not done a lot of research on Indian spices, but I can't say I found one I like. Unfortunately, the shrimp that I had was cooked with one of those spices. Not the end of the world. I ate them. For dessert I had a drambuie souffle. That helped make the world a little better.

After dinner we came back up to the room. We wanted to see if we could catch the sunset on the GoPro. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy so that didn't happen. Maryread   her book. I did this and that on the computer. It wasn't long before it was time for bed. Another successful day. We did not have a disabled friendly tour, but we made the best of the situation.