This was published 6 years ago
Akaroa: Where you'll find a little bit of France in New Zealand
By John Huxley
You can drink in the New Zealand scenery from aboard the Azamara.
As we step ashore from the tender at the picture-postcard township of Akaroa on the east side of New Zealand's South Island, an old man "dangling a line, fishing for cod" waves and wishes us a good day.
He is wearing a smile, a ragged pair of shorts and a T-shirt, as blue as the sea stretching out across "the long harbour" from which the French-founded town takes its Maori name. "This is paradise," reads the message on his shirt. "This is where I live."
"Fishy Phillipe", as he introduces himself, is proud to be one of about 600 people who count themselves permanent, year-round, rain-or-shine, residents of Akaroa, which was built in the caldera of an extinct volcano.
A Maori god overlooks Akaroa Harbour in the Canterbury Region of the South Island, New Zealand.
But on beautiful, sunny, summer days such as this, Akaroa, Phillipe and his full-time neighbours can find themselves providing a warm and increasingly lucrative welcome to up to 15,000 visitors.
Some visitors have returned to their local summer houses. Some are on a driving tour of the spectacular South Island. And some – often as many as three-quarters – have been dropped off for "a day in paradise" by visiting cruise ships, such as our new, gleaming white Azamara.
Akaroa, a colourful place which was founded by the French, "stolen" from the Maoris in 1839 and two years later placed under British sovereignty by the Treaty of Waitangi, has never been this busy before.
Sadly, in so many other ways, it owes much of its current tourism boom to a series of earthquakes. Repeatedly, they have struck Christchurch and the pretty, historic port of Lyttelton, which was to the Canterbury region what the southern port of Port Chalmers is to Dunedin.
Regrettably, while all voices cry for reconstruction, opinions are divided on priorities. And while tour operators, who did business worth $NZ500 million, press for more cruise births, especially in rebuilt Lyttelton, locals worry about the future of little Akaroa.
"The impacts of mass tourism are particularly adverse here," historian John Wilson recently wrote in the local Akaroa Mail. "A small town sandwiched between sea and steep hills has limited capacity long-term to absorb large numbers of visitors."
Companies such as Royal Caribbean Cruises, owners of the Azamara, are still contributing indirectly to the reconstruction of Canterbury by offering five-hour day-trips from Akaroa to the "Garden City" of a recovering Christchurch and the surrounding countryside.
For day-trippers such as us, there is plenty – a day's worth – of things to do in Akaroa, whose French origins are reflected in street names such as Rue Jolie, Benoit and Balguerie, and English addresses such as Smith Street, Church Street and Beach Road.
Part of its charm lies in its "slow-paced bustle", a peace that carries from its craft shops, galleries and boutique art shops to its waterside cafes on the main Rue Lavaud. As an Australian shopping for a Diet Coke said, "this could be backstreet Paris".
There's also fine dining – more French than English, it must be conceded – though in the evenings visitors (those who have not moved on, at least) might prefer to take in a show at The Gaiety Hall.
When we dropped by it featured, "the piano king of boogie woogie rock 'n' roll Ben Waters, his brother Tom and other Rolling Stone band members".
Just out of town – on land first spotted though not visited by Captain Cook in the 1770s – is Akaroa's beautiful, bright white and red lighthouse.
A short, albeit steep walk away is the Garden of Tane, an old-fashioned playground, the historic British Britomart Monument and the French L'Aube Hill cemetery, where centuries-old inscriptions reflect the harder times lived by pioneer settlers.
There's an 18-hole golf course, as well as other walking and biking tracks within a few minutes from the town centre. As the local guide points out, not entirely conclusively, "It's almost impossible to get lost".
Back in town the beaches are beautiful – just the thing for building elaborate sandcastles – and the water is a safe hunting ground for whalers, sealers, fishermen, such as Phillipe, and cruise-ship visitors.
Local guides can take visitors for farm tours, for treks out up to Stony Peak, out to the tip of the Banks Peninsula, along the coast through the ancient trees of the stunning Hinewei Reserve and further afield to the Okains Bay Maori & Colonial Museum.
Or visitors can, like Fishy Phillipe, take to the cerulean waters that lap Akaroa. They are the home not just of tasty "eating" fish but of New Zealand fur seals, little blue penguins, and the world's rarest dolphin, the Hector's dolphin.
And the threat of further earthquakes? The Akaroa Mail is pretty re-assuring. "You should be pretty safe," it suggests. "Almost all the town's buildings are wooden and won't fall down … and just about everything that might fall down has already done so."
TRIP NOTES
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Azamara Journey will return down under for a second season in January 2018. She'll offer four local sailings during her season, including a brand new 18-night Bali to Sydney voyage via the West Coast of Australia departing January 21, 2018. This unique sailing offers maiden calls to Exmouth, Perth, Bunbury, Albany, Esperance, Kangaroo Island and Adelaide. Azamara Journey will also offer a 14-night Sydney to Auckland sailing, a 13-night Auckland to Sydney voyage and an 18-night Sydney to Singapore itinerary. Fares for Azamara Journey's second Australian season start from $4399 a person twin share for the 14-night Tasmania and New Zealand voyage departing Sydney on February 8, 2018. The sailing includes overnight stays in Hobart, Dunedin and Napier as well as a scenic cruise through Milford Sound and calls to Akaroa, Picton and Tauranga before arriving in Auckland.
John Huxley was a guest of Azamara Club Cruises.
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