We decided, somewhat on a whim, to take a trip down under. I had seen an advertisement for a great fare and jokingly mentioned it. That joke became a reality. Now, we're planning the itinerary and getting everything squared away to be able to say, "off we go."
This trip we are visiting Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia. We decided to spend the majority of our time in New Zealand and to focus on the north island. Since we are traveling with an 11 year old, we prefer to be able to settle for a few nights in any location. We'll hopefully do more in-depth exploring in each of these locations. We'll also limit drive time to 4.5 hours or so (which is the same as our former habit of driving from Seattle to the Methow Valley quite regularly). In Australia, we are visiting the east coast, starting in Brisbane. I can't wait to see the Great Barrier Reef and Koalas. In French Polynesia, we will be on Tahiti and Moorea.
We are still 1.5 month out from our departure and we've already had once hotel cancellation due to flooding. No worries though; the friendly customer service staff got us rebooked.
We are trying to pack light so that we do not have extra baggage charges in Australia. This limits us to 7kg per person. We'll see if we can make it happen. If nothing else, it will make for some interesting decisions and pictures.
The toughest part of the planning is figuring out which activities are most important to us. It's easy to see how one could spend a good 6 months in this part of the world and still not do everything that should be done! Prioritizing what's important to us; what we think will be most impactful for Cassidy; and what will be funnest is an interesting process.
We're gong to have to home school Cassidy while we're traveling. That will be an interesting experiment for all of us.
We'll try to post every day!
