Today was the first of our two scheduled Days at Sea. It’s been cloudy, cool, and windy, but that didn’t stop us from going to the gym, doing many laps on the track, and getting in the hot tub. It also didn’t stop us from eating. :-)

We attended another terrific lecture from Celia Garland, this time on Seals and Sea Lions (among the things we learned was how to tell seals and sea lions apart: if the animal has visible ears, it’s a seal; if not, it’s a sea lion).

The ship brought some Australian Border Force officers on board to clear everyone through immigration today; I suspect that this is a prime assignment for the Border Force officers!

Today was our last day in New Zealand, and we spent it afloat in Fjordland National Park, where we were treated to the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen on this trip (and that’s saying a lot!).

We began soon after breakfast with a traversal of Dusky Sound, which isn’t a sound at all, but rather a fjord (like the other two sounds we sailed through today). The weather started off cold and grey, but by the time we left the sound, it was noticeably warmer and sunnier.

Our trip through Doubtful Sound (so named by Captain Cook in 1770 because he was doubtful whether it was navigable under sail) overlapped with lunch; we decided we could eat later and spent the trip on deck enjoying the view.

Milford Sound was the pièce de résistance – our onboard naturalist said so, and she was right. It didn’t hurt to go through there in the late afternoon so the sun was relatively low, either!

We’d completely traversed Dusky and Doubtful Sounds, but we could only follow Milford Sound as far as the tiny town of the same name; then we had to be piloted back to the entrance for our departure from New Zealand.

As we neared the entrance to the sound, our pilot left the ship and boarded his pilot boat.

We left the sound and entered the Tasman Sea for our two-day voyage to Sydney. We could still see the New Zealand coast for a short time.

By the time we finished dinner, there was nothing to see near the ship but water. I’ll spare you that photo. :-)