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Adventuring Down Under

December 2023 - May 2024
Circumnavigation of Australia aboard Oceania Regatta ... with pre-cruise in Sydney … and a couple of months overland. Read more
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  • Adventuring Down Under

    AU Visa Applications ✔️

    August 12, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 77 °F

    Received a UA flight change notification today. No big deal; except that we are now leaving from COS @ 7:40a. An already long travel day is now going to be even longer. It is what it is.

    For some reason, the notification prompted us to check the length of our stay. Turns out that between our 7-day pre-cruise stay in Sydney + our 35-day AusPan + our 58-day overland, we are going to exceed the 90-day limit for the Australian ETA [Electronic Travel Authorization]. Darn!

    So, this afternoon we applied for the Australian tourist (subclass 600) visa. We requested multi-entry for up to 6 months. There is a higher cost to this visa vs the ETA. But it is what it is … the cost of travel.

    The funny thing is that although today is the 12th here at home, ImmiAccounts — the online portal for visa applications — is showing the date as the 13th. That IDL [International Date Line] thing at play again.

    According to the website, 90% of the applications are processed within 22 days. Fingers crossed as we wait to hear back.

    In the meantime, at least we know that we will not have to go through a mandatory health screening prior to getting our approval. And perhaps the best news? The visa will be attached digitally to our passports, so we won’t have to send them in for processing.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    Australia Visas Approved

    August 16, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 91 °F

    So much for a 22-day processing time frame!

    We received our visas within three working days.

    I don’t know if this faster approval is just the norm for US residents. Or if all the extra information we provided regarding dates and such made a difference. Regardless of the reason, we’re delighted to have this all-important step behind us.Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    Extended … Again!

    August 17, 2023 in the United States

    Yes, we decided to add more time to our Australia Overland … again!

    The primary reason for extending was so that we could add a few things to our itinerary that our previous in-country dates were forcing us to exclude from our plans. But I’ll write about those additions once the details are worked out.

    I should note that there was one other reason for considering the extension. Mui’s been saying that there will be a lot of driving without much downtime. That is simply not our style.

    As things stand now, between the pre-cruise in Sydney + the AusPan circumnavigation + the overland, our trip will be a total of 138 days … not counting the travel days to/from Australia. This is still way short of our 6-month Australia visa, but if we extended any further, we’d have to give up our RV trip in the USA next year … which we don’t want to do.

    Instead of canceling and rebooking all of our flight arrangements, which would have cost considerably more, we simply changed our return. Making the change was easy peasy and only cost us $4.50. What a bargain!!!    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    Kimberleys by Sea

    August 18, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 93 °F

    Exploring the Kimberleys, the northernmost region of Australia, was one of the things we had to exclude from our original itinerary due to timing.

    It wasn’t that we didn’t have time to add it to our plans. Rather, the area is difficult to navigate during the wet season, so tours and such don’t operate until later in the year. We considered flying in, but even that proved to be logistically difficult.

    When we added the entire month of April to our plans, however, we looked at our options for the Kimberleys again. Land tours were still outside of our time range, but cruises were not.

    After doing a bit of research we settled on Coral Expeditions, an Australia-based company that comes highly recommended. That they have smaller ships than companies like Le Ponant, Seabourn, and Silversea was a bonus.

    With the operator selected, our next decision was to pick an itinerary and ship.

    First, we limited our options in April to the 72-passenger Coral Discoverer, the smaller of the two vessels sailing during our time frame. Then we decided to sail from Darwin to Broome instead of vice-versa.

    And voilà. We are booked!    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    The Ghan Booked

    August 19, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 93 °F

    The Ghan — which runs through the “Red Center” of Australia — is regarded as one of the world’s greatest train journeys.

    Alas, it was another thing that we were going to have to exclude from our plans due to timing issues. It wasn’t “the wet” that was a problem for The Ghan. It was the heat … just too hot to run the train during the height of summer.

    But then we extended our trip to include April. And suddenly the train journey became feasible to include in our plans.

    Instead of booking the 3-day/2-night trip, we booked the 4-day/3 night expedition because the itinerary includes a couple of fun and important-to-us off-train events … and only on departures out of Darwin and not out of Adelaide.

    Thus, we are now booked on another Australian train journey. And unlike on the IP [Indian Pacific] trip, Mui and I will share a gold-premium twin cabin on The Ghan.

    P.S. For those eagle-eyed readers who might notice the optional upgrade shown on the map to include Uluru … we won’t be doing it. A day trip would not only be incredibly tiring but also not a good cost-benefit value (for us). Instead, we have some other ideas we’re pursuing to visit that iconic landmark, which has great cultural significance to the traditional owners of the land.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    GBR Liveaboard ✔️

    August 21, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 91 °F

    Mui loves snorkeling.

    So, of course, he’s going to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef [GBR] when Regatta call on Cairns in December … as he did when Insignia stopped there on RTW2017.

    But a day trip out to the GBR is not all that he will be doing on our Australia adventure. No, this time we’ll be doing a “liveaboard” as well. What that means is that we’ll be staying a couple of nights on a boat anchored at the GBR rather than going back and forth on day trips so that Mui can get his snorkeling fix.

    What will I do while he’s snorkeling? Why relax on board the boat, of course. A little reading … a little writing … a little photography … a little doing nothing. And who knows, maybe Mui will convince me to get in the water, too! (I wouldn’t hold my breath on that if I were you 🤔.)    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    Kimberleys: Price Drop

    August 24, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 91 °F

    Received an email from Coral Expeditions last night. I thought it was in response to a query I had submitted. I was wrong.

    Turns out that in conjunction with publishing the 2025 itineraries, Coral Expeditions eliminated the price differential between their vessels for both 2024 and 2025. Thus reducing the fare for our April 2024 expedition.

    Price drops for cruises are not unusual. In fact, I’ve managed to save quite a bit over the years by going back to the cruise line after the initial booking and having a price drop applied.

    But in 20+ years of cruising, this is the first time that the operator has notified us of their own volition and applied the drop automatically. Now, that is unusual … at least in our part of the world.

    The new rate for our Kimberleys expedition saves us almost $2,100 over the original pricing. This is more than the “every penny counts” savings we’ve managed for other bits and pieces of our Australia adventure.

    Thank you Coral Expeditions!    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    AusPan Hobart Disembark Approved

    August 25, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 68 °F

    Our decision to return to Tasmania after disembarking Regatta in Sydney, prompted us to consider leaving the ship in Hobart instead.

    I did some research, contacted the ship’s agent in Hobart, and he got approval for us to do so from Australian Border Forces.

    But then we needed to put the request to leave Regatta early through the official channels at Oceania. Getting a response took a bit of time. In fact, I had to light a fire under Oceania’s Port Operations Department by sending a second message saying that I already had approval from Border Forces.

    That did the trick and I got the official OK from Oceania today. We now have the approval to leave the ship in writing … with the caveat that once we leave Regatta we will not be able to return. No worries … we don’t plan to.

    True, we will be missing one port of call and one day at sea on the ship en route to Sydney after Hobart. But we won’t have to then fly back to the island for our road trip. We consider that a “win.”

    Now the question is … should we extend our time in Tasmania by the two days we have gained, or should we add those days somewhere else in our overland trip?    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    RV’ing Across Three States

    August 31, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 91 °F

    We’ve got three roads trips planned — loosely, I might add — interspersed amongst other modes of travel to explore Australia.

    One is a road trip around Tasmania. This one will be by car.

    Another road trip will take us from Sydney up to Cairns. Also by car.

    Between these two will be a road trip from Melbourne to Perth. This one will be by RV.

    We were hoping to book a camper van, but none were available for our dates in February. So, we booked a 4-berth Class C motor home instead. The extra space will come in handy for luggage storage and such, so that’s perhaps not a bad thing.

    Not sure what our pace will be. Some say the Nullarbor Plain is dull and boring. If that’s the case, we’ll speed across it. Others say the Nullarbor is amazing and beautiful. If that’s the case, we’ll slow down as we drive across it.

    Aside from wanting to visit a few specific places, we really have no concrete plans, so we can jiggle our way across Victoria, South Australia, and Western Australia.

    Loosey-goosey is the name of the game for this part of our overland trip.    Read more

  • Adventuring Down Under

    Indonesian eVOA for AusPan ✔️

    November 1, 2023 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 57 °F

    After spending 7 weeks visiting family in Turkey, we are on our way back home to the USA. Instead of flying, however, we embarked Holland America’s Oosterdam in İstanbul for a TransAtlantic cruise … with a bit of sightseeing in Europe along the way.

    Today is our second day in Barcelona. At the moment, having visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Sant Pau, we are back on the ship. With time on our hands before sail away, we took advantage of the strong cell signal from shore to take care of a visa requirement for AusPan.

    Indonesia requires a VOA [visa on arrival] for US residents. This used to be handled by the ship in the past. Now, Indonesia has implemented a system to apply for the visa online to receive an e-VOA in advance of the ship’s arrival in port.

    It took us all of 20 minutes to prepare the files they required us to upload, complete and submit two applications, and pay for the visas. No sooner was the credit card payment approved that we each heard a ding on our phones … heralding the arrival of our approved visas via email. Easy peasy.    Read more

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