Oz or New Zealand
 

Planning on 14 day trip summer '04 with 13 yr-old. Hearing conflicting reports on which to visit. In order to maximize our time, I'm inclined to stick to one. Is it true that New Zealand offers very similar types of scenery, activities, etc. but with shorter distances making it more affordable? Had originally planned on 4 nights in Sydney, 4-5 nights in Port Douglas, and 2-3 in the Ayers Rock, Alice Springs area. Now I'm rethinking our itinerary. Advice?

For a 2-week trip, I would choose to visit only one country. I would say that it is NOT true that NZ and Oz are similar countries. The people, current culture, ancient cultures, climate, topography, and cities are quite distinct from each other. NZ is a more manageable country in 2 weeks, while you would have to do some significant flying to get around in Oz.

What do you like to do? NZ has impressive mountains, and more opportunities for adventure-type activities. Oz has tropical locales, wide-open spaces, and bigger, more cosmopolitan cities.

An important consideration is the weather. At least half of NZ is going to be cold and rainy during their winter (I assume that when you write 'summer 04', you are talking about July/August), while much of Oz will still be reasonably warm.

It is true that a 2-week NZ trip will be less costly, but, primarily based on the weather, I think that your originally-planned itinerary sounds like a good choice to me.

Thanks for your very helpful insights. I had actually overlooked the weather factor. Yes, we'll be limited to traveling during school holidays so late June thru July is the timeframe I'm looking at. From everything I've read on this board, I'm sure we'll run out of time before we've seen all the major highlights of Australia. Right now, here's what I roughly planned:

Sydney - Opera House, bridge climb, visit Manly or Bondi beach, tour to Blue Mountains, possibly visit Taronga Park zoo.

Cairns/Port Douglas - at least one snorkel trip, Cape Tribulation 4WD tour, Kuranda tour. Will likely stay in Port Douglas area unless budget allows a few nights at one of the GBR islands.

Still researching Olgas, Ayers Rock, etc. so I'm not as sure about that part of our itinerary.

Traveling as 1 adult, 1 child so likely to reserve group tours, rather than handling logistics, driving, etc. on my own. Any other suggestions to consider?

I think your itinerary in Australia sounds great, although you will wish you had more time at some destinations. But such is life! We are just back from a trip there and went to all of the places you are planning to go with our kids aged 9 to 15. Sydney and Port Douglas are both wonderful of course, loaded with great activities and things to see. It sounds like you've already got great plans in both but if you can possibly add an extra day to each I would. Four nights in Port Douglas really means just three days to take tours, and depending on the stamina of your 13 year old, you might need to take a down day relaxing at the beach there too. We had trouble fitting in everything in the Port Douglas area with a five night stay.

While some might tell you to skip the Ayers Rock/Alice Springs part of your trip, I couldn't imagine travelling to Australia without seeing some of the outback. We actually spent two nights in the Uluru area and three nights in Alice Springs, a town which has a surprising number of great things to do and is surrounded by beautiful country.

Our trip had many high points, but one thing the kids liked was a Discovery Eco tour in Alice Springs called Eyes in the Dark where we visited an outback cattle station in the late afternoon, had dinner around a campfire, looked at the stars including the Southern Cross, and searched for wildlife. It was a chance to personally experience the vastness and quiet of the outback. We saw our first and only wild kangaroos on that tour as well.

Thanks, Miranda, for the great suggestions in Alice Springs. Our dates are still flexible so depending on budget, I might be able to extend by a few days here and there. Did you make your own travel arrangements, or book through a tour or package deal? Although its still a year away, I'd like to get started on making the arrangements so I can take advantage of any pricing specials that occur between now and then. Also gives me something to look forward to as we count the months!

We made all of our own arrangements on our two trips to Australia, but in both cases we hired/purchased vehicles for longer-term (several months) travel. This is the way that my family has traveled in almost every case, so I don't know much about group tours. I have friends who have used AAT Kings (http://www.aatkings.com/usa_02/usa_welcome_frames.htm) and were very happy with them. Another option is to book your own travel and accommodation arrangements, then take local group tours at each place.

Ninja,

Did you consider Kangaroo Island? My hubby & I really enjoyed it because of the animals in their natural environment. I think your 13yr old would to.

You maybe able to cut down some nights to divert there. Last August we did:

3 nights - Sydney
2 nights - Adelaide
2 nights - KI (Sealink Tours)
2 nights - Ayers Rock (Discovery Eco-tours)
4 nights - Palm Cove (BTS tours & Poseidon reef tour)

We found this to be enough to get the highlights. I wouldn't recommend Adelaide though, but it was a good jumping point to KI. It was a lot of moving and careful planning, but worked out well.

We booked all our tours over the internet before we left, as well as domestic airfare. It turned out to be much cheaper then a package tour.

Have fun...it will be a trip you and your child will never forget!!

Amy

Ninja, I planned our trip myself but we used Far and Wide travel (Swain tours) to actually make the reservations. They offer a generous cancellation policy, which was appealing given the uncertain state of the world. You can cancel for ANY reason up to 24 hours before departure and get a full credit for a future trip. And if you have a "valid" reason, you can get an actual refund. I believe Swain was able to get us very good rates on Qantas for international and domestic flights. I don't think they saved me any money on the hotels though over what I could have done myself. But airport transfers were provided as part of the deal, and those can be quite expensive in some locations. On balance, I was happy with Swain, but I think you could also do very well just booking yourself over the internet. You especially should do it yourself if you are hoping to get some last minute deals as having a third party doing your booking reduces your flexibility after a certain point.

I booked our day tours myself over the internet. I highly recommend Discovery Eco tours for day tours. Our two tours with them were among the best days of our trip. They also do longer trips, which might be worth checking into.

If you don't want to drive in Australia, you'll be just fine without a car in most locations. All the day tours pick up and drop off at hotels. For example, if you want to ride a camel in Alice Springs, the camel farm will come get you and bring you back. At Uluru, you can do a tour or just use the Uluru Express shuttle to take you to the rock and back. We did the Discovery Eco tours called Olgas and Dunes, which was wonderful. Of course, a car can offer great flexibility, so you may decide you want to rent one for a while. We did opt to rent a car in Alice Springs and Port Douglas so we could come and go as we pleased.

Thanks so much to all the responders. You've given me some great advice and suggestions to ponder. My son and I have wonderful vacation memories from our previous travel adventures - something different every summer - but this one is shaping up to be the best ever!
I'll have to do some searching on Kangaroo Island, but does anyone know if I can fly directly there from Sydney, or would I have to go thru Adelaide? Likewise, we'd be going on from KI to either Alice Springs or Cairns. Would I be able to do that as a direct flight?

ninja,

We went to KI from Sydney via Adelaide. Emu Airways was the only one who flew to KI, so we took Virgin Blue to Adelaide then Emu to KI. It was a small prop plane (10 people?) with weight restrictions. So we left some of luggage at the Emu Adelaide terminal. No worries though. It was safe and the people at Emu were wonderful. They do it all the time.

In Adelaide you have to walk across the street from the Domestic terminal to the Emu terminal. It was funny! Added to the adventure!

We returned to Adelaide on Emu, retrieved our luggage, then took a cab to another terminal to catch a Qantas flight to Uluru.

In all we spent 2 nights at KI and loved it. If you stay the night you can see the penguins come into their nests for the night.

Here's a website for KI i used.

http://www.tourkangarooisland.com.au/ki-tourism.htm

Hope that helps :)