We had originally planned to use Fiji as a base to explore a few of the smaller surrounding countries, but with covid entry / exit requirements unpredictable at the time, decided to minimize border crossings. Instead we are spending more time in Fiji, hopping around a few of the island groups. There's some really cool places we're looking forward to, including (hopefully) seeing giant manta rays at the Astrolabe Reef, doing a farm tour of the black pearls at J. Hunter, standing on the International Date Line on Taveuni Island, and watching the lunar eclipse from Ono Island.
Tasmania has been on both of our lists for a while, and is also somewhat cooler weather-wise than mainland Australia in summer :) Hobart looks like quite the foodie town, so we have some trendy restaurants picked out as they book up weeks in advance. We also have our tickets booked for MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art.
Between Tasmania and NZ, we have a quick side-trip to the low point of Australia, Kati Thanda. This will be our 4th of the Seven Low Points.
Then we fly to Christchurch via Auckland, where we pick up our car rental, drive around the South Island, take the ferry to Wellington, and then drive back up to Auckland. We've tried to plan so we're driving at most two hours per day. Before we started researching, I had no idea New Zealand had a north and south island. We plan to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, see Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, and visit wineries in Hawke's Bay. I'm also looking forward to seeing the great albatross near Kaikoura (with wingspans up to 3.5m!), glowworm caves in Waitomo and Te Anau, little Blue Penguins in Oamaru and the sunrise at Te Mata Peak.
There's a good article on restoring original place names in Aotearoa (New Zealand). For this blog, I'll be taking the same approach as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, using them interchangeably.
On the technical side, I used the covid down time to add a few features to our travel blog, the most noticeable being search functionality, and dark mode. Behind the scenes, migrated the mid-tier to Python 3.9 and did some code clean-up.
With three new countries, I'll be up to 97 in my quest for 100 :)
Then we fly to Christchurch via Auckland, where we pick up our car rental, drive around the South Island, take the ferry to Wellington, and then drive back up to Auckland. We've tried to plan so we're driving at most two hours per day. Before we started researching, I had no idea New Zealand had a north and south island. We plan to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, see Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, and visit wineries in Hawke's Bay. I'm also looking forward to seeing the great albatross near Kaikoura (with wingspans up to 3.5m!), glowworm caves in Waitomo and Te Anau, little Blue Penguins in Oamaru and the sunrise at Te Mata Peak.
There's a good article on restoring original place names in Aotearoa (New Zealand). For this blog, I'll be taking the same approach as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, using them interchangeably.
On the technical side, I used the covid down time to add a few features to our travel blog, the most noticeable being search functionality, and dark mode. Behind the scenes, migrated the mid-tier to Python 3.9 and did some code clean-up.
With three new countries, I'll be up to 97 in my quest for 100 :)