Day 7 (Monday 1st January 2024) Port Chalmers (Dunedin)

 Happy new year to all.

Today we visited Port Chalmers.  Port Chalmers (Māori: Kōpūtai)^[4][5] is a quaint little town serving as the main port of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Port Chalmers lies ten kilometres inside Otago Harbour, some 15 kilometres northeast of Dunedin's city centre. 

We disembarked the Royal Princess and boarded the “Monarch” for about 2 1/2 hours of Otago area animal watching. The 5 crew of the little Monarch provided fantastic service to 45 visitors aboard. Highly recommend their site seeing service. We saw Sea lions, Fur seas, various types of birds including penguins and 2.8 metre wing span albatrosses.

Fur seals

Penguins

Seabirds, including some magnificent albatrosses

After a rewarding few hours we returned to the township of port Chalmers, which is made up probably 2 to 3 main streets of businesses. Most shops were closed for the public holiday despite two cruise ships being in town. The town featured many 19th century buildings including a magnificent church overlooking the bay.

We enjoyed a late lunch from “The Spot On” cafe, whilst enjoying some local beer from Mackie’s Hotel (known by locals as the “Black dog”). We also looked at local craft market put on for the cruise ships in town. Very pleasant. 

Finally we returned to our ship at 6pm in the evening, and our ship disembarked about two hours later. 

The sun finally set about 9:30pm local time.