By Karen Quinn-Panzer
Travel Matters
Karen Quinn-Panzer
We just hosted 32 days in New Zealand, Australia and Fiji with a small group of 12 people. What started off with a two-week cruise on Oceania Regatta from Auckland to Sydney turned into a much larger adventure.
For starters, we knew we wanted to spend a couple of days in Auckland adjusting to the time change. When you fly to New Zealand, you cross the International Dateline and lose a day, so that was a good move. We spent a beautiful day taking a ferry to Waiheke Island with many wineries and the best oysters our group had ever tasted. After boarding Oceania Regatta (only 600 guests) right next door to the Hilton Auckland, we then went on to six ports in New Zealand. They included Tauranga (visiting a Maori village); Gisbourne (vintage train ride and seafood at the pier); Napier (art deco heaven and home of Hawk’s Bay wineries); Marlborough Valley (Sauvignon Blanc capital of New Zealand); Lyttleton (Christchurch), where we sailed a catamaran around Banks Peninsula; and finally Dunedin. With Scottish roots, the famous Dunedin Railroad station is picture perfect. Our train trip to the Taieri Gorge crossed several scenic viaducts and tunnels through the mountains – with a boxed picnic lunch onboard.
For the rest of the cruise, we sailed through the Tasman Sea to Melbourne, Australia for two days, then Burnie, Tasmania and disembarked in Sydney. Our highlight from Melbourne was our trip to Phillip Island – visiting koalas and wallabies in their natural habitat, and “the Nobbies,” home of Australia’s largest colony of fur seals. The highlight was the nightly penguin parade, where the smallest penguins on Earth march out of the sea at sunset each night to find their home on the beach, in groups of 20 to 60 at a time. Truly spectacular.
Tasmania did not disappoint either. We chose an excursion including a botanical garden and wildlife – spotting the rare Tasmanian devil plus kangaroos and crocodiles.
When you go all that way to the other side of the world, you want to see more of Australia. So we spent four days in Sydney and four days in Cairns (gateway to the Great Barrier Reef).
Experiencing the largest reef in the world was special, with snorkeling, diving or the semi-submersible. We also visited the Kuranda Tropical Rainforest by train, and by a World War II army amphibious duck and came down the mountain by cable car.
In Sydney, we started with a sunset cruise of Sydney Harbor with a Penfold wine tasting dinner. One day we took a private VIP tour of the iconic Sydney Opera House followed by dinner at their aboriginal chef restaurant Midden. We enjoyed a full day in Hunter Valley at three wineries, plus Small Mouth Vodka Distillery.
We completed this adventure with three nights in Fiji to chill out at the beach, since Fiji Airways offers a great price on business class flights from LAX to Australia/New Zealand.
Karen Quinn-Panzer is the owner and vacation specialist at Dream Vacations Quinn Panzer Travel in Milford.