Starting Our Journey to the Southern Hemisphere
Our Route: 7:00AM Saturday PDT to 9:10:PM Sunday NZDT
Yesterday we flew from Florida to Los Angeles for our first leg our South Pacific Rove which will take us to New Zealand, a Cruise of the South Pacific and a long weekend in Sydney. I have heard other people tell me that the flight is really long and having traveled to Shanghai, Tokyo and Bangkok, we decided to break it up. We did an overnight in LA and then this morning did our second leg from LAX to Honolulu, Hawaii. Hawaiian Airlines has a flight to Auckland, New Zealand through Honolulu. We are currently waiting out our three hour layover in the Hawaiian Airlines Plumeria Lounge. Our final leg of this initial journey is just over 9 hours to Auckland. So far, we are liking how this has split up the flying time. We get into tomorrow evening and then rent a car to drive to our accommodations.
We are staying at the home we found on Home Exchange. If you have never heard of it, it is a community of home owners who agree to exchange homes either at the same time or in exchange for points. We listed our home on the site last year and earned points when a Canadian couple and their daughters stayed at our home earlier this year. We were able to use the points we earned for a week stay in Niagara on the Lake last month and now a week in New Zealand basically for free! The home we are staying at overlooks the harbor. I will post pictures in the Photos and Videos section in the next couple of days.
Our itinerary for this rove is 6 nights in New Zealand, a 10 day cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas out of Sydney, Australia that will cruise to the Loyalty Islands, Vanauatu and New Caledonia then back to Sydney. We will then spend 5 nights in Sydney before heading back to Oahu, Hawaii for a 4 night stay. As per our usual process, I have done quite a bit of research preparing for this trip. The nice thing this time is that we are meeting my niece and her boyfriend for the cruise and she is so much like me that were able to partner in our planning.
Lots more to come in future blog posts as we explore the southern hemisphere for the first time. This one has been on my bucket list for a long time, so I am very excited to finally make the trip. Aloha from Hawaii!!