Much like the smiling selfie I took through gritted teeth after my 500-step climb with DD to a waterfall on Waiheke Island, happy snaps don’t tell the full story of a holiday.
So I thought you might like to hear the good and the bad about luxury expedition cruising following our New Zealand trip.
That reminds me … it turns out we didn’t actually booked a luxury expedition cruise. It was a luxury sailing cruise.
We presumed all Ponant cruises were expeditions. But when you book you have to make sure there is a monstera leaf symbol on the cruise information. It’s the “expedition” symbol. If you don’t see one of those on the booking page you’re just going on a normal luxury cruise.
What’s the difference? On expedition cruises there are zodiac excursions once or twice a day to get up closer to wildlife and scenic stuff.
We were disappointed not to have the chance to do the zodiac thing on our cruise and, should we ever book a Ponant cruise again we will be very meticulous in our monstera leaf symbol searching.
It was a pity because New Zealand really lends itself to zodiac explorations, especially spots on our cruise such as Dusky, Doubtful and Milford Sound.
Regular luxury cruises are lovely and perfect if you want to just sit back and drink Champagne and look at pretty scenery, but we’d rather do that when we are 10 years older. Right now we want to be adventurous while we are still relatively hail and limber.
As for the ocean voyage part of our cruise, we knew that would be sans-zodiac and it lived up to our expectations of being an awesome few days to unwind, stare at the ocean, eat fancy food and drink lots of the aforementioned Champagne.
If you don’t get sea sick or bored easily I would thoroughly recommend it as a relatively economical way to decide if you like luxury small ship cruising.
If you book an ocean voyage before or after your cruise there are also sometimes free offers, which is what happened with our trip. When we tallied up the daily cost per night of the free ocean crossing and the trip around New Zealand it came out at about $500 per person. This might sound outrageous, but I think it’s not bad value when you consider it included flights, all meals, all drinks (even cocktails, which are around $20-25 each in Sydney), a floating hotel room each night, no car hire, no petrol and no stress because the crew is taking care of all your usual holiday hassles …
You simply unpack when you get on board and relax. Sure, you could hire a campervan and do it cheaper – and we might one day – but taking the upmarket, laidback option was the right holiday for us at that time.
Our ocean cruise and New Zealand adventure confirmed that we like luxury small ship cruising. You won’t be seeing us on one of those apartment-block-sized vessels any time soon. We were gobsmacked, for example, by how huge the Virgin Voyages Resilient Lady looked while it was berthed beside our ship in Hobart.
No disrespect to the Lady, she’s packed with amazing features, like multiple fancy restaurants, drag shows, ’80s-themed aerobic workouts, ’90s boy band dance classes, dodgeball tournaments …
But that’s not what we’re looking for in a cruise. We’re there for the scenery and the wildlife (not the partying kind).
We’re also keen to avoid the crowds and be able to get off the ship seamlessly. At each port we visited other than Whakatane, which didn’t have a suitable wharf, we could walk straight off the moment the gangway went down because our ship only held a maximum of 180 passengers.
Our cruise also confirmed I don’t want to visit cities on cruises. When we arrived in Auckland we stayed the night in port. I stepped off for an hour to get a coffee and got straight back on the ship again for lunch and remained there until it was time to disembark the next day. Auckland seemed perfectly nice, but I just didn’t fancy being in a CBD.
By comparison, Napier was a lovely little town to explore for a few hours, while we grabbed coffees and dumplings in Dunedin then headed off on a little boat to see our first love: wildlife.
As for the accommodation on our ship, we scored a suite on the free ocean voyage as there were no regular cabins left. It was pretty fabulous, with a sofa, large bathroom, dressing room, wide balcony and lots of space around the bed.
Our cabin (619) on Le Laperouse for the New Zealand leg was much narrower with a smaller bathroom and balcony and no dressing room. Space was tight around the bed, but we were very happy with it and would probably not bother paying extra to stay in a suite in the future.
As for the balcony, we used it a little, but not very much because it was usually pretty cold out there. I reckon a balcony is only a must-have if you are on a cruise where it is going to be consistently balmy.
The smaller the ship, the smaller the selection of restaurants and entertainment. The food on Le Laperouse was consistently better than P&O, for example, but it did get a bit repetitive after a while because both the grill and the restaurant served pretty similar stuff each day.
Apparently some of the slightly larger small ships – around the 300-500 passenger mark – have a wider variety of restaurant options, which we are tempted to check out.
However, it was fantastic that all food, drinks and mini-bar contents on Le Laperouse were complimentary. Drinking Champagne for lunch every day felt very decadent. There was even an ice bucket of bubbles beside the freshly baked baguette station at breakfast every morning. I didn’t partake but I saw plenty of other people hooking in before moving on to cocktails at 10.30am …
I’ve decided post-cruise that free booze is both a blessing and curse. Having to pay for your drinks encourages moderation. I replaced the 60% water in my body with alcohol during the holiday because I have no self restraint. Each ay I would resolve to have a Diet Coke with lunch then a waiter would arrive at my elbow with a bottle of French rose and I’d be powerless to refuse.
There were lots of bars on the ship too, ranging from the underwater Blue Eye to the Lounges on Deck 3 and Deck 6. Our friends Gay and Chris even saw a couple of Dusky Dolphins swim past when they were in the Blue Eye one night. So jealous!
However the entertainment on our cruise was fairly basic – there was a duo that couldn’t sing in tune (I would avoid the bar and deck like the plague when they were playing, especially when the daily program announced they would be performing tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals), a solo singer who could sing and belt out great covers and an easy-listening DJ. Other than that the “entertainment” mainly consisted of daily trivia and salsa lessons.
The swimming pool looked very fancy but was only swimmable on a couple of days during the voyage. The rest of the time it was either freezing cold or scalding hot. Attempts to talk to the French receptionists about fixing the thermostat issue were unsuccessful.
Information was also light on and confusing. Apparently it’s usually better on Ponant cruises but we were constantly frustrated by how hard it was to get clear instructions and clarity on pretty much everything during our trip.
As for the passengers … luxury cruises mean luxury guests. We found a tribe of about 20 people on our wavelength who we loved and would enjoy chatting to each day, but there were a lot of very not-like-us people aboard who would barely nod if you said hello to them.
There were also lots of older men aboard who seemed to have lost their personalities with age. They were expressionless shells who shuffled around and rarely spoke while their vivacious wives fluttered around vivaciously socialising.
As for the wifi, it was pretty crappy and slow. It definitely didn’t lend itself to a working holiday should you choose to mix business with pleasure on the high seas.
Speaking of mixing business with pleasure, I had been given a pair of Cointreau shoes that I decided would make their debut on social media during the cruise. I wanted to caption the shot “When your kicks match your cocktail” and pair the shoes with a Margarita.
It turned out to be a lot harder than it sounds, with DD tasked over two days with trying to get the perfect angle while I rejected all his shots … poor DD …
I finally went with this one … it’s hard being a wannabe wrong-side-of-50 influencer’s boyfriend …
As for the petri dish fears you may have about cruising … when we were going through immigration in Auckland it became apparent that COVID-19 was raging through the ship – people were masked up in the queue and whispers started about how many people had caught it. I suppose that’s the risk you take when cruising as you are in such a small space. I think we avoided catching it because we had booster shots two weeks before we sailed, mainly dined outside and didn’t attend many group activities.
The risk wouldn’t stop me sailing again, but it might influence choices I make on board in the future.
However, overall we had the most amazing time on our holiday. I will never forget the moment we first stepped on the ship and were handed a glass of Champagne then went out on deck for lunch. It felt so special and decadent.
We will definitely cruise again. The main topic of conversation with people we met on board was which cruise ships they had been on before, the destinations and their verdicts on them.
It was great to get the download on the pluses and minuses of various regions and cruise lines.
As mentioned previously, I probably wouldn’t choose another cruise that went to lots of city ports. I want to sail to remote places that are hard to access by land.
Stay tuned! And in the meantime I’d better get cracking on a diet to shed my cruise kilos …
Song of the day: Eurythmics “Would I lie to you?”
housegoeshome 
Leave a comment