On Roselina in New Zealand, 2006-2007

Instead of spending the Bolivian school vacation (December and January) in cold and dark Denmark, my parents invited us to stay on their sailboat, which is currently touring the World. It is a five year trip with people getting on and off according to what their normal life permits. My father, who is semi-retired, spends half the year on the boat (when it is too cold for construction activities in Denmark), but some people stay longer and other people only a few weeks. The boat is 62 foot long and sleeps 12 people. The boat has its own homepage with Google Earth technology, which means that its location every day can be followed by friends and family at home: www.roselina.dk). The homepage also has lots of photos and travel letters from the people on board, but it is in Danish.

We got on the boat in Auckland on the 15th of December and spent the next couple of weeks island hopping, from one incredibly beatiful island to the next.

The Christmas/New Year crew consisted of my father, AC, the captain, Polle (he is also one of the owners of the boat), his son, Thor, his daughter, Ida, my mother, Kirsten, Osvaldo, Raphaela, Kamila, Natasha, my niece, Mathilde and me, who took the photo on the left.

We didn't actually spend that much time sailing, which was nice because long-distance sailing is actually quite boring, except when dolphins show up and play around the boat. It is also quite upsetting for the stomach, and then there is the no-alcohol-policy.

The great thing about sailing is that you can get to all these beautiful small bays, that are inaccesible without a boat. As soon as we arrived at a new place we had our arrival beer on deck and then went out exploring.

Smoke House Bay was a cute little bay, where some volunteers had built a nice little bath house. Before getting your warm bath you had to find some firewood and burn it in the stove which heated up a tank of water. A hot shower was highly appreciated at that time, as the boat does not have a shower.

There was also a self-maintained ecological toilet, running on ash and dry leaves, and smelling of roses. And of course a smoke house where you could smoke the catch of the day and eat it around a camp fire under the stars.

That was when I decided that electricity and Internet are not quite as essential as I have always considered them to be. 

Here is Roselina and the 4 children on board it during our vacation: Raphaela, Kamila, Natasha and their cousin Mathilde.

Here is AC and Polle in the boat's kitchen preparing our Christmas dinner. We always ate very well on the boat, and Osvaldo's plans about loosing weight on this trip had to be dropped.

Here we are all eating russian blinis with champagne which is my favorite dish. We found out that our favorite champagne was actually cheaper than most red and white wines in New Zealand, so we got a whole lot champagne of that trip.

Here are Osvaldo and Polle testing their strength between Christmas decorations and laundry.

And Osvaldo playing cards with the kids in our bed.

Apart from really nice beaches, New Zealand has a lot of public playgrounds, most of them with toilets and picnic tables. This is very convenient for tourists exploring the islands by car, which we did when Roselina was taken out of the water for routine maintenance after 18 months of sailing. 

And of course no trip to New Zealand is complete without a Bungy jump. Osvaldo did it for us at one of the oldest and most famous jump sites, on the beautiful Taupo River.

Our joint New Year Letter has more pictures, but it is a 1 MB download.

New Zealand has a lot of vulcanic activity, and as can be seen from the picture on the left, it smells of rotten eggs in many places. The advantage is all that cheap geo-thermal energy, which allowed almost every motel we stayed at to have a swiming pool with hot mineral water.