South Pacific Travel Guide

The arrangement of my trip to Australia was done in 2 weeks time easily through the phone and by email. I told the travel agent, the places I wanted to see and he gave me a 2.5 week itinerary that hit all the spots. I went to Sydney, Port Douglas (GBR), Ayers Rock, Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. 

Sydney - location of hotel chosen was perfect. It was within 10 min walks to both the Sydney harbour bridge and opera house.

Port Douglas was chosen over Cairns which turned out to be a good choice as the GBR, Daintree and Mossman Gorge were closer to Port Douglas.

A cruise was booked for my GBR experience to Low Isles. I would NOT recommend this one to adults or solo travelers as it was full of children (99% of ship was children and their family) and wasn't too exciting. I specified that I wanted a tour without a lot of kids but I got this instead. I think skipping Low Isles and going further away to other parts of the reef would have been more memorable.

Ayers rock - There could have been better arrangement here as the travel agent booked my flight early in the morning so I got to Ayers rock at 10am. However, the hotel he booked let people in their rooms at 3pm. There really wasn't much to do around the hotel for 5 hours. It was hot, uncomfortable and I much rather enjoy Port Douglas a bit longer and taken a later flight instead. I asked the hotel staff whether they could get a room ready sooner as I was sick with a cold. The hotel staff still did not have my room ready at 3pm - the promised time for a room. With some juggling, they had to give me another room instead. 

The arrangement of activities during Ayers rock was not the best. I had a dinner booked the first night at 6pm. Then the next day, he booked me a 12km walk around Uluru with a 7km hike around kata rock in the afternoon. Bad idea! It was 40C so I don't think both walks should have been on the same day at all. He did not tell me that he booked a 12km walk. He just said he booked a sunrise Uluru tour. Had I known the walk was that long in that heat, I would have gotten it changed earlier so that I didn't lose money switching to another tour.

Adelaide was great. I did my own tours without the help of the company but it was a good city choice. Hotel was in a good location.

Kangaroo Island was also a good experience. If you want to see animals or be in a quiet place away from bigger cities, go there.

Overall, I would go back to Australia. I saw so many things but I also know I missed a lot of the country too (Brisbane, Melbourne, gold coast etc). Just another reason to go back. It was nice of the company to help book my tours so quickly but some improvements especially in Ayers Rock would have made the trip a bit better. I would use this company again but would ask the agent to lay out every little detail about each location/hotel/tour so that I could decide whether a change is warranted. 

I'm not sure it matters how much time you spend in Australia, it won't be enough. Certainly our 14 days weren't.  We decided to try to 'do it all'. Sydney with the Blue Mountain, Kangaroo Island, Melbourne with the Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island, Ayers Rock (Uluru), Cairns (Port Douglas) with the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. This meant 5 separate flights in-country with 5 travel days in addition to our arrival and departure. After gently warning us that this was a lot, our travel agency did everything they could to make our trip as memorable as they possibly could. This involved multiple email exchanges, discussions of possible tour sites, several changes of itinerary and all done with good humor and efficiency. Their hotel recommendations were uniformly excellent - or as good as the area allowed. The tours they arranged were equally excellent. While not providing dining recommendations they did suggest contacting hotel concierges, well before our departure, which allowed us to make several restaurant reservations at the begining of the trip, making our lives much easier. They arranged transport to and from airports which was uniformly good other than one episode of being forgotten. The taxi cost was subsequently covered.  They had a harder time getting the transport company to spell our name correctly. Fortunately they were only one letter off so easily recognizable. We were provided thorough lists of contacts with phone numbers which did occasionally come in handy. Our travel agency made all of our in country flight reservations. We were suprised at our first flight that seats had not been chosen. While we understood the reasoning, some prefer an aisle versus a window it was an unnecessary worry.  We were pleased that this was rectified for the remainig flights after we contacted them. Overall, we felt that our agency did an excellent job for us. If we were to return to Australia or New Zealand we would certainly contact this company again.