Our Adventure to Australia and New Zealand

Part III
Touring on Vacation

:) Comprehensive Guide to Tours: Each hotel we stayed at had a comprehensive booklet of all the tours, and activities in the airport, from the free to the most expensive, with their costs, contacts and all other information. You could take a helicopter flight around the city, climb over the top of the city bridges, deep-sea dive under the ocean, or do a walking tour of the city; it was all available in the book. In Melbourne they even had a Restaurant Tram Tour that visited famous restaurants for a tasting tour. If you had no idea what to do before you went to a country, you could order one of those booklets from each city and plan your own adventures.


:) Great Day Tours—My Thing: The Day Tours we had were very good, and I don’t think you could get the same value by trying to set it up yourself. For example, the Blue Mountains and Australian Wildlife Tour out of Sidney was an all-day bus tour with guided commentary. You were picked up and returned to your hotel and taken on a tour:

• Through the Homebush Bay, site of the 2000 Olympic Games

• Three hours into the Blue Mountains National Park

• A light morning tea and a tour in a township along the way

• A scenic Cliff Drive past the Famous Three Sisters Outcropping and Echo Point

• Have lunch at the Katoomba resort region where we saw an aborigine playing the didgeridoo

• Ride the Railway to the lush hidden valley and explore the rainforest

• Glide out of the valley on the Cableway, taking in the panoramic views of the Jamison Valley.

• Take a ride of the recently unveiled Skyway, a journey 370 meters above the ancient ravines and
dazzling waterfalls

• See the views from Narrowneck and Cahill Lookouts and Megalong Valley

• Visit the Featherdale Wildlife Park where you will get close to cuddly koalas, kangaroos, wombats, dingoes and penguins

• Take Rivercat ride down the Parramatta River



:) Spontaneous Exploring—Ed’s Thing: On the days we didn’t have the guided tours, we had our rail/tram/bus pass and explored the city. This was Ed’s chance to be spontaneous and he really enjoyed it. We took the map and information about the city and explored. We’d suggest one thing we’d like to see; sometimes we’d find it and sometimes we’d find something different that we enjoyed more. We discovered the Chinese Friendship Gardens which I loved, and found so peaceful. We walked all over the Darling Harbour (this is the correct Australian spelling) and got lost several times. We finally found Chinatown and were disappointed with it. I discovered we could walk from our hotel to the Opera House easier than we could take a tram there (Ed begs to differ that it is too long to walk to). We took a Hop-on/Hop-off tour of the City on our own and went to several museums. We enjoyed the celebrations of Chinese New Year and learned how friendly the Australians were to Americans who were trying to find their way around town.




:) Hop On/Hop Off Buses: These were fun ways to get an overview of the city. Each city we visited had one of these buses, and they were a fun way to explore the city in an inexpensive way. We would complete the whole tour and listen to the commentary, then on the second go-around, we would start hopping off to see things. Each bus had two tours—one of the inner city, and another of the outer area. Each tour took about an hour, so you had to start early to see all you wanted to see. A ticket on these, which you could purchase whenever you got on, was usually around $20.00. The blue stops were easy to see, and they came about every 15 to 20 minutes (a little longer on the outer tours) so you never had to wait too long. You could get a one day or two day ticket.



:) Nature Always Has Surprises: A cyclone hit the north of Australia and we congratulated ourselves on missing it—until we got to Melbourne and the tail end of it hit there and dropped seven inches of rain on us in a couple of hours. It caused flash flooding in the streets and flooded the entryway of the hotel basement restaurant where we were eating. The next day we were on a day tour to Phillip Island to see the Penguin March and we got a first-hand tour of the flooded areas around Melbourne, as we were detoured around them. Then we were disappointed in the official penguin parade because we were rained out (but we had already seen plenty of penguins so it wasn’t too bad).



:) Phones Are Handy; Never Leave Home without Them: We were glad we had the phone then as our daughter had seen the floods on the news and called us to see how we were doing; she was worried sick about us and wondered why we hadn’t emailed. We told her about the cost of the internet, and we hope she understood.

Our Adventure to Australia and New Zealand

Part II

In the Country

We arrived in Australia ready to enjoy it fully. Since we were in an English-speaking country, we didn’t have to learn a foreign language, which was very fortunate. However, we still had to cope with some unexpected difficulties.


:) Throw-away Cell Phone: One of the smartest things we did was to purchase a “throw-away” pre-paid cell phone at the Australia airport when we arrived. For $29.00 American money we bought a cheap, but adequate cell phone with $150.00 worth of minutes; for $29.00 more we got another $150.00 more minutes. I immediately texted our phone number to our children so they could contact us in case of an emergency. This phone was good both in Australia and New Zealand and it was cheaper to call the U. S. than to call a local number in Australia. However, calling a local New Zealand phone number (the airlines to confirm our flight) on this Australian phone number ate up almost all our minutes. But the phone was a lifesaver!!!!


:( GPS doesn’t work: Our GPS could never get a satellite so our purchase of the maps was a total waste!!! But it was a good idea that just didn’t work!

:) Electrical Converters: Electricity voltage is not the same anywhere in the world, so you have to have converters to use any electrical items you might have—laptops, curling irons, ipods, etc. Additionally, every electrical outlet is different (to prevent you from plugging your laptop into a 240 watt outlet and zapping your laptop to death). You could rent converters and adapters from the hotel (some charged you for them, while others only asked for a $20.00 deposited that you got back when you returned it).

But they aren’t that expensive, so I purchased both an adapter, and a converter before I left home, and I’m glad I have my own for future travel. My adapter has outlets for anywhere in the world! My converter had two settings—one higher wattage for curling irons that use a lot of electricity and another for lower wattage for most items. Converters and adapters are one thing you CAN’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT!

:( No Free Internet: The biggest surprise was that our hotels did not have free internet! I guess I was surprised because most hotels in the U. S. have it, but the more expensive the hotel, the more they wanted to charge you for it! From $.76 a minute, to $10.00 for an hour, to $30.00 a day, they seemed to think that only businessmen with an unlimited business account needed an internet account. But if you had to fly from city to city or country to country as we did, it was a necessity.

I ended up paying for it occasionally, but most of the time I took my Ipod touch or laptop to McDonald’s where they had free internet to send an occasional email or Facebook message to let our family and friends know we were alive. I certainly would not want to spend more than 30 minutes to an hour on the internet per day on a holiday, but I feel in this day and age, internet access is a reality, and dark, dingy internet cafes don’t cut it. The hotels had “business centers” but they charged a large fee to use them also. I confirmed my flight and then printed the boarding passes at the airport.

:) Prearranged Shuttles: The best thing the tour agent set up for us was to be picked up at the airport by a shuttle bus and taken to our hotel. That was wonderful, and I would always have that whether I booked through a tour agency or not. It made life so much easier not to worry when you got to the airport—just to hop aboard a scheduled airport shuttle.

Only once did the shuttle fail us and it was at 9:30 pm when we flew into Auckland. There were few shuttles or taxis by the time we cleared customs and baggage. The shuttle we finally convinced to take us on the 40-minute drive to town would only accept New Zealand money (or a premium to use American dollars) so we exchanged money at a high exchange, and paid him. It made us realize how glad we were that we didn’t have to do that on a regular basis.

:( Ask Before You Go: We discovered the hard way that you always ask a cab driver how much it will cost to take you somewhere when you give them the address. They don’t have counters that add up the charges as you travel like most cities have; when you arrive at your destination, they tell you the charge--$90.00 in our case.


:) Use the Local Public Transportation: My husband hates public transportation, and I thought he wouldn’t be caught dead on a tram or a bus, but he adapted right away to it. We found that it was far easier, faster (and cheaper) to get along on the trams than any other way. We bought a five-day public transportation pass for $20.00 and then went everywhere on it. In Sydney and Melbourne there were trams through the inner city that were easy to get on and off, so we rode them until we realized we were lost; then we’d hop off, look at our city map and hop another tram going the right way. Our hotels were downtown so in Sydney we could actually walk everywhere, but Ed would get tired and grab a tram.