Packed and Ready to Go

Here we are, all packed and ready to depart on a trip down under.

We have been contemplating an alternate winter get away to the usual SW Florida itinerary for the past few years. We have really enjoyed the past 6 winters in the Naples area but have also enjoyed some of our fall "road trips" in the SW USA. Hopefully, this will be a combination of the best of both and we are really excited in seeing some beautiful sights and experiencing interesting people and cultures.

This will be a truly self-planned adventure that certainly was made somewhat easier in this age of the internet and on-line booking. We have also been fortunate to have a number of friends that have travelled to New Zealand and Australia recently and have provided lots of suggestions of what to see and where to stay. A number of these recommendations have been incorporated into our current itinerary and have made the planning a lot easier. Thanks also to TripAdvisor.com and Google Maps Streets View! We still have a number of gaps to fill, especially for the Australia part of the trip but I am sure things will fall into place as we go. If you have any input, please e-mail us!

Here is a rough outline of our plans. We depart Buffalo on Tuesday January 6 for San Francisco. We will be staying with friends in Sonoma CA for a few days then departing San Francisco for Auckland NZ on January 9. We miss Jan 10 on the flight across the international date line and land in Auckland on January 11 to start our road tour of the North Island. After a few weeks we will take the ferry to the South Island for another three week road tour ending in Christchurch.

From there, we fly to Brisbane Australia on February 23 and embark on another road trip along the east coast of Queensland to Cairns. From there,we fly to Adelaide and a road trip along the coast to Melbourne. Next will be a trip to Tasmania. From there, we will fly to Sydney, spend some time taking in the "big city" before returning to North America on April 9.

I hope to keep the blog up to date on a daily basis with photos and a bit of text of the hi lights. A lot will depend on the availability and quality of internet connections we have at our accommodations.

If you are interested in following the blog on a regular basis, either save the link to it and check when you want or sign up on the blog for an e-mail notification of recent posts. From what I have been able to determine, the images will display a whole lot better on a computer (using a web browser) than a mobile (phone) device.

As you can probably tell, we are really looking forward to the adventure....