December 10, 2025 Pre -trip


  In late November, we struggled through the applications for an Electronic Travel Authorization (eTA) for both New Zealand and Australia. It took close to 30 minutes in total to get each of the cellphone photographs to be accepted into the online applications. Many other travellers, on both Facebook and Cruise Critic, have complained about the finicky photo insert feature of both applications. Fortunately, the other five countries, that we visit in January, have on arrival eTAs that will be completed by the cruise ship administration.

   We leave in a few days for our seven-week trip to Australia and some South Pacific islands. After a few days in Sydney and surrounding area, we plan to cruise for 14 days from Sydney and back visiting places in the Australian states of Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Then we will continue on a 28 day cruise from Sydney along the Australian east coast to Cairns before travelling to Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and finishing in New Zealand. 

  The 28 day voyage begins January 4, 2026 and will have its own blog:   

 https://australiaandmelanesia2026.blogspot.com/ 

   Our Air New Zealand flight from Vancouver to Auckland, New Zealand, should take about 14 hours. We cross the International Dateline, which means “losing a day”. The time difference between Vancouver and Auckland is 21 hours. Meaning if it is 6 p.m. Monday in Vancouver then it would be 3 p.m. on Tuesday in Auckland.  We will have a three and a half hours layover before flying to Sydney which takes about three hours 45 minutes. Sydney is two time zones further west from Auckland. Therefore only 19 hours ahead of Vancouver. 

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