We finally got back to Toronto after a four-day transit back home. The arrival through customs at Pearson has improved since our last time through (pre-covid), although it's still behind all the other international arrivals we had on this trip. It also took almost an hour for the luggage to get from the plane to the carousel. I suppose we should be happy that our luggage arrived at all.
The highlights (in chronological order):
- Snorkeling with manta rays in the Astrolabe Reef
- Flying over the reefs in little prop planes during local flights in Fiji
- Standing on the 180th meridian (the only accessible place in the world where you can do so)
- Snorkeling with all the colourful fishes and coral at Rainbow Reef
- Village walks on Taveuni
- Walking around Hobart
- Road trip to the Outback in South Australia
- Making it to Kati Thanda, our 4th of the Seven Low Points
- Driving along Highway 6 on the West Coast
- Excursions to Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound (Milford more impressive to see, Doubtful a more fun experience)
- Watching the sheep graze from our lodge in Tahakopa Bay in Southland
- Little Blue Penguins in Oamaru
- Seeing Wandering Albatross in Kaikoura (wingspan of 3.7m, the largest flying bird in the world)
- Glowworm caves in Waitomo and Te Anau (my favourite was Ruakuri Cave)
- Learning about wines from the many wine regions in NZ
- Orakei Korako Geothermal Park
We were lucky to not get sick over the whole trip. There was a lot of uncertainty with covid when we booked back in Feb 2022, but pretty much all the restrictions had been lifted by the time we started out trip. We wore masks on flights and other public transport, and in the occasional museum if it was busy.
It was our first trip where English was an official language in all the countries. Fiji has three (English, Fijian, Fiji Hindi) and NZ has three (English, Māori and NZ Sign Language). Legally, Australia has no offical language but English is considered the de facto national language. (There's a handful of other countries without an offical language, including UK, US and Japan).
Australia is the first country I've spent more than a couple days without having any currency from the country. (We had cash in NZ as a backup -- in a couple places they didn't take foreign credit cards, and some roadside fruit stands were cash-only)
We also traveled with a bluetooth speaker (in our case, an Echo Dot 5th Gen, which can be used offline as a bluetooth speaker). We used it quite a bit, especially in bnb's.
A couple last bits of trivia, the 38 days we spent in NZ is the longest I've spent consecutively in another country. At eleven weeks, this was our longest trip together. It's probably nearing the longest we'd like to be out traveling, after a while we do miss the routine of home.
Time to start thinking about our next trip!
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