Getting Ready

Kia Ora (hello in Maori as everyone says in New Zealand)!

We are heading out on a big adventure to New Zealand and Australia.  We leave Toronto on January 26 and arrive in Auckland, New Zealand on January 28 (we change planes in San Francisco).  We're staying in Auckland for a week (need jet lag recovery time) and then head to Rotorua for three nights.   

All of our travel in New Zealand will be by bus.  We have a bus pass (based on the number of hours we expect to travel) and have also made advance reservations on the exact buses we will take from city to city.  We will be visiting nine cities/towns on both the North and South Island, before heading to Australia.  

There are far more sheep in New Zealand than people, although the numbers of sheep are falling.  In 1982, there were 22 sheep per person (the all time high), but in 2017, the number had fallen to six sheep per person (still a lot of sheep!).  The population of New Zealand is around 4.9 million people.

Auckland- with Sky Tower

Rotorua-- lots of Hotsprings

We then head to Napier on February 4 for four nights.

Napier-- lots of art deco buildings

Then on to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, on February 11.

Wellington

On February 15, we take the bus and then the Ferry to Nelson on the South Island.  We are in Nelson until February 19.

Beach near Nelson

Then on to Kaikoura for a short visit until February 21.

Hopefully, we'll see some whales at Kaikoura

Then we head to Christchurch where we will stay until February 25.

                                        Christchurch

Then on to the university town of Dunedin, where we will be until March 1.

Dunedin

Our final stop in New Zealand is Queenstown, where we stay until March 6.

Queenstown--- we also hope to visit Milford Sound for a day trip

We then fly from Queenstown to Melbourne, Australia on March 6. 

We are travelling in eastern Australia and Tasmania

We will be spending 11 nights in Melbourne before we fly to Hobart, the capital of Tasmania on March 17.

Melbourne

Hobart, Tasmania

Salamanca market in Hobart

On March 24, we fly from Hobart to Sydney where we will visit until March 31.

Sydney

We then fly to Byron Bay for some beach time, where we will stay until April 3.  We will then take the bus to Brisbane for the last four nights of our trip.

Byron Bay

Brisbane

We fly back to Toronto, through Vancouver, on April 7.

We are staying mainly in Airbnbs, as well as a few hostels and lodges in both countries.  For those of you that have been following our travel blogs, you will know that Allan often takes a new name.  For this trip, he wants to be called Alain (his Paris name), even though we will be in English speaking countries.

I expect our first post from New Zealand will be a day or two after we arrive in Auckland.  I will NOT be blogging every day as I often do on our journeys.  However, I will blog at least once from every place we visit in New Zealand and most likely every few days from the cities we are staying in for longer than three nights.  

We hope that you will join us on our journey.  Feel free to contact us with travel tips or just to say hello!!  We look forward to seeing most of you in the spring when we return.