For years, even before we got married, we dreamed about traveling to Australia and New Zealand. They seemed like such fantastic places of adventure and beauty with bucket-list locations such as Australia Zoo, Great Barrier Reef, glowworm caves, and Hobbiton.
When we got engaged, we figured this trip would make for an incredible honeymoon! However, it wasn’t good timing for us. After our wedding, we immediately had to make plans to move from Boston to Virginia. It was also difficult to plan a massive and complex vacation while simultaneously planning for our amazing wedding. On top of all that, we needed to wait a bit to save up the money and vacation time so we could maximize our time there.
Two years later, we made it happen!
Planning
It was pretty intimidating for me to start planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the other side of the globe, but I knew that I just had to dive in and do it otherwise it would never get done! And it really wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.
I started out just searching general places to see and things to do in both countries. Australia is way bigger than I thought so we had to narrow it down to what we could see in a week. We are both massive fans of Steve Irwin, so visiting the Australia Zoo was a must. Once I learned the Great Barrier Reef is near Australia, that was added to our must-see list as well. Seeing cities such as Sydney were not high on our list because we aren’t city lovers. Luckily, both the zoo and the reef are along the east coast of Australia, so that helped to narrow down the region. The zoo is near Brisbane and the reef is most commonly accessed from Cairns in the north. I found a tour that connected those two locations over the course of a week and we were pretty much set!
For New Zealand, we set aside two weeks to explore the whole country. It is much smaller than Australia and, while we could spend a lifetime there, two weeks turned out to be a great pace for us to complete our itinerary. I have two friends who have each visited NZ for their respective honeymoons and they graciously shared their detailed itineraries with me. One of the friends also referenced a blog that had a few itinerary options as well. So I cross checked all three itineraries with a few other lists of places I found online and came up with a bunch of places/activities that interested us. I started trying to connect the dots when I realized that the blog had a two week itinerary already laid out that connected all the places we wanted to visit. So I used her map and suggestions as a framework for us and it worked out beautifully.
Besides the itineraries themselves, we also needed to decide what time of year we could go away for three weeks! I am going to start our flower farm in spring 2020 so we needed to travel sometime in the fall 2019 or winter 2020. Greg came up with the idea of traveling after Christmas because we bring our cats to my parents’ house over the holidays and they could just stay there while we were gone. It is also a time when the factory he works at is shut down and the work schedule is less busy so he wouldn’t be leaving his coworkers in a time of huge need.
We originally looked at booking flights to Australia on December 26, but due to long flight times and time zones, we would be getting to Brisbane at 6am on Saturday and trying to meet up with the tour group at 9am that day. It was too little time and the only way to get there sooner was to fly out on Christmas Day which wasn’t ideal. I was trying to figure out how to make it work when Greg suggested we take the tour the following week and fly out on the 31st instead. That would give us two full extra days before the tour started so we could get settled and catch up on rest. That was the perfect solution, with a bonus of the flights being half the price!
Wild Kiwi tour company took care of booking all of the hostels during the week-long tour, but we booked the rest of our accommodations ourselves through Airbnb and Booking.com. We pretty much stayed at a different place each night over the three week trip, but moving around that much wasn’t actually too bad! The key is to keep most everything in your bag. Every night I wrote in my journal and put it right back in my bag because I would hate to lose it. We had a good experience with each host and got to stay at some neat places for great prices.
While we were in Australia, the bushfires were terrible and it was all over the news. Luckily, our route was in the northeast, along the coast in Queensland which was not affected by the fires. The only times we encountered the effects were when we were in Sydney and also in New Zealand! In Sydney we could smell smoke everywhere, but thankfully it was raining that day and the fires were getting better. Ash from the Australian fires crossed the Tasman Sea to New Zealand and you could see discolored snow on the mountain peaks from ash deposited there. We were very lucky to be safe in tropical areas where they were actually gearing up for the flooding season.
Itinerary
Our flight left Syracuse on December 31st to Detroit. From there, we flew to Los Angeles to catch our international flight. We left LA at 9pm PST, which was midnight on New Year’s on the east coast! The flight to Brisbane Australia was 13 hours and when we landed, it was January 2nd 2020! So we skipped January 1st altogether!
The long flight wasn’t actually that bad! We watched a movie, they fed us dinner, we slept off and on for a few hours when they dimmed the lights, and had breakfast while watching another movie when they turned the lights back on before landing. There were a few times when I checked the time remaining and couldn’t imagine 5 more hours, but the time passed and we survived.
Here is a summary of each day; click on the links to read the detailed posts!
Day 1: G’day Australia!
Summary: Landed in Brisbane, rented a car, drove to Landsborough, explored the beach and Glasshouse Mountains, rested
Day 2: Australia Zoo
Summary: Visited Australia Zoo, drove back to Brisbane
Day 3: Brisbane to Noosa
Summary: Joined the tour group, took a train from Brisbane to Noosa, visited the beach
Day 4: Fraser Island
Summary: Day trip to Fraser Island
Day 5: Noosa Coastal Walk
Summary: Noosa coastal walk, overnight train to Airlie Beach
Day 6: Whitsunday Islands
Summary: Boarded sailboat, sailed to Whitsunday Islands, explored Whitehaven Beach, slept on board the boat
Day 7: Snorkeling
Summary: Snorkeled, sailed back to Airlie beach, and got off the boat
Day 8: Cairns
Summary: Train to Cairns, explored Night Markets
Day 9: Great Barrier Reef
Summary: Snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef
Day 10: Atherton Tablelands
Summary: Explored Atherton Tablelands (Lake Eacham, Millaa Millaa Falls, and Josephine Falls), flew from Cairns to Sydney
Day 11: Sydney
Summary: Walked around Sydney (The Rocks, Opera house, Royal Botanical Gardens), flew to New Zealand (Auckland)
Day 12: Glowworm Caves
Summary: Rented car, drove to Waitomo and saw glowworm caves, drove to Turangi
Day 13: Tongariro Alpine Crossing
Summary: Hiked Tongariro Alpine Crossing, drove to Lake Taupo and had our best meal of the trip
Day 14: Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland & Whakarewarewa Redwood Forest
Summary: Drove to Wai-O-Tapu, visited Thermal Wonderland, had our worst meal of the trip, drove to Rotorua, walked in Whakarewarewa Redwood forest
Day 15: Hobbiton, Cathedral Cove, & Hot Water Beach
Summary: Drove to Matamata, visited the Hobbiton Movie set (aka the Shire!), drove to Coromandel Peninsula (Hahei), coastal walk to Cathedral Cove, visited Hot Water Beach
Day 16: Stargazing at Lake Tekapo
Summary: Drove to Auckland, returned rental car, flew to Christchurch, rented car, drove to Lake Tekapo, stargazed
Day 17: Church of the Good Shepherd & Mt John Observatory
Summary: Walked to the Church of the Good Shepherd, drove up to the Mount John Observatory, drove to Twizel
Day 18: Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park
Summary: Hiked Tasman Valley track and Hooker Valley track in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park
Day 19: Wanaka
Summary: Drove to Wanaka (stopped at Clay Cliffs and Lindis Pass lookout along the way), played in the illusion rooms and maze at Puzzling World, swam in Lake Wanaka
Day 20: Wanaka to Te Anau
Summary: Browsed shops in Wanaka, drove to Te Anau, walked along Lake Te Anau
Day 21: Milford Sound
Summary: Rode tour bus to Milford Sound for a 2 hour nature cruise
Day 22: Quad Bikes in Queenstown
Summary: Drove to Queenstown, learned how to ride quad bikes on a tour, watched sunset over Lake Wakatipu
Day 23: Kiwis & Luge
Summary: Browsed shops in Queenstown, visited Kiwi Birdlife Park and saw kiwis, rode the luge
Day 24: Massages & 14+ Hour Flight Home
Summary: Had a 90-minute couples massage, flew from Queenstown to Auckland, then to Chicago, and finally Syracuse
We had a spectacular time on our trip! I’m so happy we were able to do everything we wanted and have everything go so smoothly! I highly recommend an extended visit to Australia and New Zealand. Even though this was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip, I think we’ll be back!
Check out this video I made showing highlights from each day of our trip!
Thanks for reading!
-Rebecca
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