Australian Adventure Tour for Seniors: Sydney to Melbourne

Our travel company exceeded our expectations: the itinerary was ideal, every bit of information we needed about pick ups, tours, hotels, contacts, etc., was detailed in our handbook which we received upon arrival at our first hotel, and the very minor kinks along the way were addressed immediately and thoughtfully.  We had five stops between Australia and New Zealand, and the only issue we had was our own--with nearly three weeks, it was not enough time!!  We didn't allow for the travel time between locations and as a result our free time was very condensed.  The hotels were all perfect and exactly what we requested:  boutique hotels with great locations.  We traveled from Sydney to Ayer Rock/Uluru, to Port Douglas/Barrier Reef, to Melbourne, to Queenstown NZ and back to Melbourne to return home. That was perfect and our contact at the travel company was terrific. 

  Eileen W and Sam W,We arrived in Auckland and since we arrived so early in the morning we couldn’t check in. No worries… we walked around the city. The hotel was okay, nothing special. Very stark in the rooms. It was convenient to many places. On 4 March, Caleigh, picked us up and took us all on a tour around Auckland. She is also the owner of the tour company. She was an amazing guide and extremely informative. We saw mountain look outs, volcano near the beach, Maori museum and a wonderful lunch. We were out from 8:30 till 5pm. We all loved her and would highly recommend her and her company. The next day we went to Waiheke Island and toured some vineyards. Our guide was not fabulous and a little quirky. The wines were okay, nothing to write home about, and we saw different things. Devonport was a cute little town and we had great chocolates.We flew to Queenstown and the hotel was great. Wonderful rooms and so convenient to everything. Hills were a bonus too (not), ha-ha. The steamship was very nice and we had an amazing dinner at Walter Peak. The sheep sheering was a good demonstration and the Australian sheep dogs are amazing animals. We thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. Our trip to Milford Sound with our guide was wonderful. He was very knowledgeable and was a very entertaining guide. Milford sound was beautiful and we all had a wonderful time. We took the van back to the hotel with no issues. Our scenic wine tour was great… wines were beautiful and tasty. Our guide was very informative and we had a fabulous lunch at one of the wineries (and I don’t eat meat). Sam loved it and so did I. All our pickups for our tours were perfect and on time with no issues. We truly loved New Zealand and especially Queenstown. As our tours and pick ups in NZ were perfect and it seemed it was not to be the same throughout Australia. I’ll explain...We arrived in Sydney on Friday, 10 March. The hotel gave us a small room and they corrected it the next day. The hotel  was nice. It was convenient to the harbour and other sites, but the area outside the hotel was very dirty. It was situated at the edge of China town and although the restaurants there were great, the street just outside the hotel was full of trash and other unsightly trash. The first morning there (Saturday, 11 March) we were to be picked up at 7:30 for a tour to the Blue Mountains. We were 10 minutes early and waiting on time and finally at 7:45 am when no one had showed, I called our travel agency's after hours number. I spoke to Maria. She looked into the problem and it seemed that whoever wrote out our itinerary (I’m guessing one from the team) miswrote the entire itinerary. It seemed that no tour was scheduled that day and we were not notified in the brochure or by phone or email. The tour was rescheduled for Monday, which was supposed to be our free day. If the agency had given us the correct written itinerary, then we would have scheduled our free day differently than being surprised at the last minute. (We could have toured the opera house and seen some museums). Maria was very apologetic but there was nothing that she could do. We were not happy about this at all. We scheduled a 3 hour walking tour (on our own) of Sydney for that day. By the end of the day we had walked 7 miles around Sydney.On Sunday, 12 March, we were scheduled to be picked up at our hotel at 10am for a full day tour of Sydney and then sailing in the harbour. The driver/guide was over 30 minutes late because he didn’t know where our hotel was located. He claimed he did not know there are 3 hotels from the same hotel chain in Sydney and didn’t know there was one near our area. Because he was late, he rushed through the sites and did not stop at the Rocks where we were supposed to get out and walk around. Luckily we had been at the Rocks the day before, but the other people missed out.On Monday morning, bright and early our guide picked us up for the Blue Mountain tour in the pouring rain, which continued all day. He was an excellent guide and showed us many great places and sites, despite the rain.We were off to Cairns. The driver who was supposed to pick us up at the airport was late. He had been walking around the airport in Cairns without a sign, looking for all of us, and could not find us. (Duh, have a sign with the person’s name on it.) The hotel was wonderful and we had wonderful accommodations and the views were beautiful. The Ocean Freedmon and Coral Reef tour was amazing. We all had a fabulous time snorkeling and the captain and crew on the boat were great and extremely helpful. We had a fabulous day.On 16 March we waited outside our hotel to be picked up for our tour to Kuranda. This time when the guide did not show up on time we called the agency at 8:35am and when no one answered at all, I called the tour group. The woman I spoke to said that they had been trying to reach them but to no avail. They had changed our pickup location and we needed to be there in 10 minutes. We made our way to the pick up at the hotel, where other people were waiting as well. They got back to me a while later through email and said “I personally amended pick up toCairns and confirmed with the tour. I will check on that with supplier”. “In regards to our drivers, I re-confirmed your pick up time and location as per itinerary earlier today. So it stays as is - 6:30am from the hotel in Cairns tomorrow.” We got to Kuranda and had a lovely day walking around and taking the Skyrail and Train. It was extremely hot that day.On 17 March, again we waited outside our hotel promptly at 6:20am waiting for our pickup. Again the guide/driver did not show up on time. A man called me and said that there was an accident on the road an he was delayed. He said he would be at the “hotel” shortly. I said to him that we are waiting at the hotel for him outside. At 7:05am he still wasn’t there and I called and said we were still waiting at the hotel. He told me again, the driver/guide would be there shortly. At 7:15am he arrived and said that he had been told to go to the other hotel and was looking for us there. We waited another 10 minutes for another couple to show up and then we finally left for our tour of the Daintree. Our guide was named Grant also, and he apologized profusely and by the end of the day he was an excellent guide. He added in other sites for us to see and told us that he would show us everything and not cut anything out. We didn’t arrive back to the hotel till 7:15pm.We were off to Launceston. The wine tour we took on 25 March was very good. We stopped at other locations besides the two wineries we went too. (The guide asked us if we preferred to do an additional winery, and we chose to allow her to show us sites of Launceston which we definitely enjoyed). She was an excellent guide and very knowledgeable.We all left Tasmania on Sunday, 26 March and stayed with family until 31 March. When taking a trip of this length we expected a few hick-ups. We would have hoped that the tour operators would have reached out to us instead of us having to contact the tour groups when issues arose. We had confirmed our trip with you before leaving for NZ and Oz, and the difficulties in Australia made those days stressful.As a whole, we had a fabulous trip and would definitely recommend your tour company for NZ and Oz. David of our travel agency was informative, helpful, amazing, and extremely attentive to our wants and needs in planning our trip.  We would definitely use his company again.