Need help quickly with itinerary for Australia & New Zealand
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Need help quickly with itinerary for Australia & New Zealand
My husband just got booked on a business trip to the Far East ending in Melbourne where I will join him in early November. Since we probably won't have an opportunity to go back to that part of the wo
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Cat:Australia and the South PacificForum:0EEC8770
Cat:Australia and the South PacificForum:0EEC8770Discussion:fde20225-de2d-4c1e-bb21-edc6343d6d11
My husband just got booked on a business trip to the Far East ending in Melbourne where I will join him in early November. Since we probably won't have an opportunity to go back to that part of the world, we want to divide our 19 full vacation days between Australia & New Zealand.
We only have about a week to plan this before he leaves on business, and we are beginning to feel overwhelmed by all the choices, travel books, postings, etc. We hope you can help us!
As a quick intro, we are in our early and mid-60's, in fairly good health except for we each have back issues, so we won't be doing any adventures such as bungy jumping, zorbing, abseiling, and hiking is out due to hubby’s bad knee, but walking is OK. We love to snorkel so definitely want to go to the Great Barrier Reef. Other than that, we want to sightsee as much as we can to feel we have experienced at least some of the flavor of each country/area, while acknowledging that we are only scraping the surface of the large countries. We don’t want to spend a lot of time driving or riding in large tour buses (day trip mini-bus tours are OK), and will plan to fly between some of the cities. We can fine tune what we are going to see later, but are trying to figure out how to divide of the time so we can pick hub cities/areas to book accommodations there and air travel between areas.
Tentatively, we were thinking: 1 day Melbourne sightseeing 1 day mini-bus tour of part of Great Ocean Rd, http://www.atwad.com.au/tour_gor.html 1 day fly to Ayers Rock (or Alice Springs?) - see Kata Tjuta and sunset at Uluru (Ayers Rock) 1 day Ayers Rock – Kings Canyon or is that too far & is the hike too strenuous? maybe sightsee in Alice Springs instead? Would like another day in the Red Centre but probably can’t do it. 1 day fly to Cairns 1 day Cairns day trip – Great Barrier Reef snorkeling 1 day Cairns day trip – Kuranda – Skyrail – Tjupukai Aboriginal Cultural Park 1 day fly Cairns to Sydney – sightsee afternoon 1 day Sydney sightseeing, harbour cruise, bridge walk? 1 day Sydney day trip – Blue Mountains, wildlife part, or? That would be 10 days - more or less time where?
1 day to travel to NZ (to Christchurch?) and this would leave us 8 days to sightsee NZ before flying out of Auckland on our 20th day back to the U.S. East Coast .
We haven’t had much time to research NZ but think we want to see Rotorua (Maori), Auckland, Mt. Cook, Franz Josef Glacier, take the Shotover Jet Boat, Milford Sound cruise, Christchurch, Queenstown, maybe Wellington. We love wine, but don't think we have time for wine tours. Again, we will try to fly between long distances since we don't have the time for long drives.
So much to see – so little time so please HELP! var fctb_tool=null; function FCTB_Init_ffe4a99a9f884cd5a4ccc213517efa2f(t) { fctb_tool=t; start(fctb_tool); }
Congratulations, you have done a lot of homework in a hurry! Your plan is sound. I trust that you realize the whirlwind tour with such huge distances covered for so little time spent in these far-flung locations will cost you a fortune?
Assuming that you have that considerable spending money and that you really want to see all those places no matter how quickly, I can only say - good for you, go for it. I see no dud among them that I would say "Don't do it". I just hope that you'll have the stamina to keep going, so plan wisely, with a bit of downtime now and then.
You can make it seem less hectic if you look for flights late in the day so that even the travel days also allow for a bit of sightseeing and maybe even R+R to catch your breath before you head for the airport yet again. Better to arrive late in the evening, even very late, just before bed time - the day is over anyway.
A couple of Sydney specifics: The full bridge walk is an involved and expensive thing, taking up quite a bit of time also. If it is the views you're after, you can get much the same (ok, not entirely the same thrill but somewhat the same views) by going up on the bridge pylon lookout - www.pylonlookout.com.au. It's easy to get to and easy to climb and you get good pictures from 360 degrees. They won't let you take your own camera (or anything else) on the full bridge walk, you're in a "moon suit".
The Blue Mountains are a long day excursion, it might be best to do it with a coach operator who whisks you there and back in a long day rather than trying to drive yourselves. If you can at all, see if you can include in that excursion the Jenola Caves - www.jenolancaves.org.au/ - they are fabulous. Quite a bit of hiking involved, wear good shoes and a sweater, it's cool in there.
Don't go out of your way to make time for a winery.
See if you can do a one-way car rental from Auckland to Wellington, then fly from there to Christchurch for access to the glaciers and that whole region.
Between Auckland and Wellington you should, after Rotorua, not miss Taupo (lovely location by a lake in a former volcanic crater - stay the night and take in the sunset by the lake!).
Then drive to Napier, as you approach the town there might be your chance to drop in on a winery without wasting time, there are a few right by the main road. But mostly Napier is a must because it was entirely re-built in Art Deco style after a fire, there is no such uniquely styled and quaint/interesting town anywhere else!
While in Napier, drive up onto Bluff Hill (at the northern end of the city center), look down on the port and beyond, nice views - bring along a sandwich and take a breather.
The budget airlines in Australia and NZ are great, casual, no big deal, good deals to be had.
New Zealand is an incredible country with lots to see and do. And the distances are bigger than they might appear. I think you'll be trying to cover too much ground if you try go to North and South Island, unless you fly in and out of Wellington and ferry over to South Island (a spectacular ferry crossing). You've been doing a lot of research so you'll be getting better acqainted with what you can see/do on the 2 islands so see which appeals more and then stick to that island. Otherwise i fear you'll be spending all your time driving rather than doing. Enjoy !
