Ohinerau Bay

After a few days in the deep blue of the Pacific, we spotted land on waking this morning.
There was a slight time-clock malfunction this morning. We woke at 7am, and I had us up and scrambling to make breakfast in the restaurant by 9.30am.
Arriving at 9.29.59, I was pleased to see it quiet, and parties still arriving after us! Then parties kept coming and the restaurant filled. Little did I realise my international roaming had kicked in, auto adjusting the time by 2 hours forward.. too bad Id already manually done that... meaning We were up 5am and rushed to breakfast by... 7.29...
We didn't have a set itinerary today, planning to get a ferry out to nearby island and explore the city and thats what we did.
Getting off the ship at 1.30pm, we were docked at the Auckland commercial port. All passengers needed to be shuttled to the citys tourist harbour/waterfront. I made impromptu enquiries at the ferry terminal, and organised a trip out to Waiheke Island for the four of us, with Brody, Alyssa and Myles to come along.
We caught the 40minute, 3.00pm ferry and off we went.
Without a lot of time or prebooked transport, we set off with prams for a 25minute walk to Oneroa. We had time for a scenic coffee, wander through the town and down to Little Oneroa beach for playground and beach time.
After which, a 35minute walk had us back at the 6.00pm ferry with 4 seconds to spare!
Being back at Auckland before 7 gave us time to have an hour stroll through the heart of Auckland up to the skytower and back to port, grabbing some souvenirs and dodging homeless along the way. All in all it was a pretty place, super clean and modern.
Back aboard the ship via shuttle and a haphazard full body cavity search on reboarding, we (the 4 of us) opted to chance our luck for mytime restaurant dining at 8pm. The kids were fantastic and we just about pulled off 3 courses and slow service without significant incident or embarrassment and have Axel down by 9.30 and Ryland 10.
We have our sole cruise excursion to a glow worm cave starting 8.15 tomorrow (not 6.15). So time for sleep for an early start!Read more